Jean Lurçat

Lurçat’s artistic production was immense: it is however his role as the renovator of the art of tapestry design which ensures his lasting renown. As early as 1917, he started producing works on canvas, then in the 20’s and 30’s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins workshop dates back to 1937, at the same time he discovered the tapestry of the Apocalypse which was essential in his decision to devote himself to tapestry design. He first tackled the technical aspects with François Tabard, then on his installation at Aubusson during the war, he established his technique: broad point, a simplified palette, outlined cartoons with colours indicated by pre-ordained numbers.

A huge production then follows (over 1000 cartoons) amplified by his desire to include his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) and the collaboration with the art gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then by his role as a tireless advocate for the medium around the world.

His tapestries reveal a pictorial world which is specifically decorative, with a very personal symbolic iconography : cosmogony (the sun, the planets, the zodiac, the four elements…) stylised vegetation, fauna (rams, cocks, butterflies, chimera …) standing out against a background without perspective (voluntarily different from painting) and, in his more ambitious work, designed as an invitation to share in a poetic (he sometimes weaves quotations into his tapestries) and philosophical (the grand themes are broached from the wartime period onwards) vision whose climax is the “Chant du Monde” (Song of the World) (Jean Lurçat Museum , ancien hôpital Saint Jean, Angers) which remained unfinished at his death.

Here stylised vegetation, white on a black background (as in Talbot’s  photogrammes), appears as if  torn to reveal a red stain against which is framed an owl : the title suggests hope, however the cartoon announces by its mutedness “the end of everything” as in the “Chant du Monde”.
A similar piece is conserved at the Atelier-Musée des Tours Saint Laurent, in Saint-Céré.

Bibliography :
Cat. Expo. La tapisserie française, Musée d’art moderne, Paris, 1946
Claude Roy, Jean Lurçat, Pierre Cailler Editeur, 1956, ill. n°113
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat tapisseries nouvelles, Maison de la Pensée Française, 1956, n°6
Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957, ill. n°109
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, tapisseries de la fondation Rothmans, Musée de Metz, 1969
Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976, ill.
Cat. Expo. Les domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986
Colloque Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie, 1992
Cat. Expo. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013, ill. n°131
I. Rooryck, Atelier-Musée départemental Jean Lurçat, 2015, ill. p.14
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016