Suburb 

Aubusson tapestry woven in the Atelier Goubely. With its bolduc signed. 1945. Passionate about mural art from 1937 (he took part in the International Exhibition), Lagrange drew up his first Cartoons in 1945, and became one of the founding members of the A.P.C.T. First expressionist (like Matégot or Tourlière), his Cartoons (from his collaboration with Pierre Baudouin) evolved toward a kind of stylization that, in the 1970s, would lead to Cartoons made of purified signs in pure tones. Moreover, beyond his role in the tapestry’s revival (and the related public commissions), Lagrange was a Professor at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, but also a regular collaborator of Jacques Tati, a designer of monumental sets; lastly, a renowned painter-artist, close to Estève or Lapicque. “Banlieue”, my first tapestry woven in Aubusson, recounts the spectacle of mattress beaters making the wool fly through the streets with a curious machine,” the artist explains. At the beginning of his career, Lagrange approached—under a realist vein, even an expressionist one—the themes of the suburbs, of trades (amusing mise en abyme on the work of wool), and of everyday life (cf. Guignebert “the flea market”, contemporary) in a manner entirely at odds with Lurçat’s cosmogony. The tapestry appeared at the 1946 exhibition, and two examples were preserved in public collections, at the Musée de la-Chaux-de -Fonds and the Musée du Pays d’Ussel. Bibliography : Collectif, Muraille et laine, Editions Pierre Tisné, 1946, ill. n°58 Madeleine Jarry, La tapisserie, art du XXe siècle, Office du livre, 1974, ill. n°69 Cat. Exp. Lagrange, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1987, reproduced pp. 16-17 Cat. Exp. Jean Lurçat, compagnons de route et passants considérables, Felletin, Eglise du château, 1992, reproduced p.29 Robert Guinot, Jacques Lagrange, les couleurs de la vie, Lucien Souny editeur, 2005, n°28, reproduced Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, reproduced p.73 J.J. et B. Wattel, Jacques Lagrange ets es toiles : peintures, tapisseries, cinéma, Editions Louvre Victoire, 2020, reproduced pp. 33, 70-71