Ripples
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Tabard workshop.
Circa 1960.
Matégot, initially a decorator, then a creator of objects and furniture (an activity he abandoned in 1959), met François Tabard in 1945 and gave him his first cartoons, figurative at first, then soon abstract, from the 1950s onwards. He became a member of the APCT (Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters) in 1949, participated in numerous international exhibitions (Matégot, like Lurçat before him, would be a tireless advocate of tapestry), responded to numerous public commissions, sometimes monumental (“Rouen”, 85 m2 for the Seine-Maritime prefecture, but also tapestries for Orly, for the Maison de la Radio, for the IMF…) and produced no fewer than 629 cartoons up until the 1970s. In 1990, the Matégot Foundation for Contemporary Tapestry was inaugurated in Bethesda, in the United States. Matégot, along with other artists such as Wogensky, Tourlière or Prassinos, was among those who resolutely oriented wool towards abstraction, lyrical at first, geometric in the 70s, by exploiting different technical aspects of the craft: gradients, beating, stitching, dotting…
Remous is a testament to Matégot's work around 1960: lyricism, play on transparencies, and a call for the technical virtuosity of tapestry weavers (changes in tone, gradations, etc.). Its evocative title also recalls the artist's interest in aquatic subjects (see his "Regattas") treated in an abstract-metaphorical manner.
Bibliography:
Exhibition catalog, The Tapestries of Mathieu Matégot, La Demeure Gallery, 1962 (our tapestry is reproduced there)
; Exhibition catalog, Matégot, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and Contemporary Tapestry, 1990-1991
