François FAUREAU

François Faureau’s career was entirely singular. Born in Aubusson, he followed the courses at the ENAD, then under the direction of Marius Martin who, even then, promoted large-scale weaving and counted tones that Lurçat would later take up as his own. He therefore took part in the ENAD stand at the 1925 International Exhibition of Arts décoratifs as a painter-cartoonist, with the tapestry “Solitude, verdure” or the screen “Canards,” which oscillated between a classicizing style and the influence of cubism. He subsequently established his own workshop, but his work remained confidential, far removed from the protagonists of the “Renaissance of Tapestry.”

If the Aubusson workshops (as did the National Manufactures) continued their activity during the Occupation, the woven works produced under the injunctions of the Art-Maréchal remain rare, even though this traditional know-how could have met the values of the National Revolution. The famous phrase pronounced as early as 25 June 1940 by Pétain (Emmanuel Berl having been the writer), and which became a Vichy leitmotiv—celebrating rural life, rootedness, and, more prosaically, agriculture—is illustrated here in a literal, and succinct, manner: a variety of labors, vegetation, architectures, animals, … flourishing under the aegis of the Vichy regime.

Provenance: Régine Deforges Collection

Bibliography:
Cat. Expo. Tapisseries 1925, Aubusson, Cité de la tapisserie, 2012