Eddies
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Tabard workshop.
Circa 1960.
Matégot, first a decorator, then a creator of objects and furniture (an activity he renounced in 1959), met François Tabard in 1945, and gave him his first cartoons, initially figurative, then soon abstract, from the 1950s onwards. He became a member of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painters-Cartoonists of Tapestry) in 1949, participated in numerous international exhibitions (Matégot, like Lurçat before him, was a tireless advocate for tapestry), responded to numerous public commissions, sometimes monumental ("Rouen", 85 m2 for the prefecture of Seine-Maritime, but also tapestries for Orly, for the Maison de la Radio, for the IMF...) and produced no less than 629 cartoons until the 1970s. In 1990, the Matégot Foundation for contemporary tapestry was inaugurated in Bethesda, USA. Matégot was part, along with other artists like Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, of those who resolutely oriented wool towards abstraction, initially lyrical, then geometric in the 1970s, exploiting different technical aspects of the craft: gradients, beatings, stitched, dotted..
Swirl is a testament to Matégot's work around 1960: lyricism, play on transparency, call to technical virtuosity of the weavers (passages of tones, gradients, ...). Its evocative title also recalls the artist's interest in aquatic subjects (cf. his "Regattas") treated in an abstract-metaphorical way.
Bibliography :
Cat. Exp. The tapestries of Mathieu Matégot, La Demeure gallery, 1962 (our tapestry is reproduced there)
Cat. Exp. Matégot, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and Contemporary Tapestry, 1990-1991
