Robert WOGENSKY

Wogensky met Lurçat as early as 1939, but he only worked with him after the war, creating his first cartoon in 1945 (which was already titled "The Birds"), and soon joining the APCT (Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters). A professor of mural art at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués in Paris, Wogensky created 159 cartoons up until the 1980s, most of them woven by Legoueix. "Wool has the warm blood of man. It inspires confidence and reassures us. A wall of wool is a more human, more alive wall" (remarks taken from Robert Guinot, "The Tapestry of Aubusson and Felletin," Lucien Souny, 2009). This credo would permeate Wogensky's creative work, in flights of fancy (literally, since the bird, often stylized, was one of his favorite subjects) that were lyrical (some cartoons, particularly from the late 1970s, are resolutely abstract), in his "Natural History" cartoons (the title of one of his tapestries, from 1961), or "cosmic" cartoons, featuring constellations or natural elements. "I have always enjoyed working on large formats," he would later confide to Robert Guinot.

Although our cartoon appears modest compared to some of Wogensky's official commissions (University of Strasbourg, Senate Conference Room, etc.), its subject allows for a spatial expansion, a surge of these elliptical bird motifs, enlivened by the chromatic energy of the bright red background.

Bibliography:
Exhibition catalog, 25 Years of French Tapestry 1944, Paris, Gobelins Manufactory, 1969, no. 33
; Exhibition catalog, Tapestry and Space, Châteauroux, Cordeliers Convent, 1978, no. 21
; Exhibition catalog, Robert Wogensky, The Woven Work, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1989, ill. p. 34
; Exhibition catalog, Robert Wogensky, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum of Contemporary Tapestry, 1989, ill. p. 20