Maurice André

Maurice André stayed in Aubusson throughout the war. Founder of the cooperative group "Tapestry of France" and member of the APCT (Association of Tapestry Painters and Cartoonists), he developed a personal aesthetic, far removed from Lurçat's, characterized by rigorous, cubist flat planes in a frequently minimalist chromatic range. He received ambitious public commissions, for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg ("Europe United in Work and Peace") and for the French Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair ("Modern Technology at the Service of Man"). Quite naturally (and like Wogensky, Prassinos, and others), he then moved towards abstraction, initially in a rather lyrical style, then in an increasingly geometric one, following a trajectory very similar to that of Matégot.

In the mid-1960s, André's style became closer to that of Matégot, where beaters, pricking, and dotted lines were the norm. In its theme, treatment, color palette, and format, our cartoon is similar to "Grand nocturne," held at the Musée Jean Lurçat, and to contemporary tapestries in Angers.