Floor rug
Rug/Tapestry of Aubusson woven by the Goubely workshop.
1959.
Training from the start in Bissière’s workshop, he was familiarized with mural art (decorations for the 1937 Exhibition), before turning to the applied arts, especially those linked to sacred art (cartoons for stained-glass windows, liturgical ornaments, …). In 1947, Manessier created his first cartoon. Dissatisfied with the initial results—too dry and precise—he turned in the 1950s to the Plasse le Caisne workshop. Using a different technique that enables contrast of points, play of materials, differences in relief,… and provides the weaver with greater latitude of interpretation, in a closely worked dialogue with the painter-cartoonist, Plasse le Caisne from then on wove most of Manessier’s tapestries, sometimes of very large dimensions (« Gregorian Chant » for the Maison de la Radio,…), and sometimes forming part of a cycle (the 12 « Spiritual Canticles of Saint John of the Cross »),….
A very distinctive work by Manessier: by its function it is a tapestry, but woven at Aubusson at the Atelier Goubely (their only collaboration); a unique piece commissioned by Myriam Prévot, co-director of the Galerie de France, which was then exhibiting most of the painters of non-figuration and lyrical abstraction (and in particular devoted 7 solo exhibitions to Manessier) for the decoration of her apartment on the Quai d’Anjou: a testament, therefore, to the closeness between an artist and the dealer who championed him.
Bibliography:
reproduit p.39
