Jean Lurçat

Lurçat’s œuvre is immense: nevertheless, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that has earned him a place in posterity. As early as 1917, he began with canvas cartoons, then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he discovered at the same time the Angers Apocalypse tapestry cycle, which definitively encouraged him to devote himself to tapestry. He first addressed technical questions with François Tabard; then, following his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: large stitches, counted tones, numbered drawn Cartoons. A gigantic production then began (more than 1,000 Cartoons), amplified by his desire to bring along his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) and his collaboration with the gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then by his role as an indefatigable promoter of the medium throughout the world.

His woven work bears witness to a specifically decorative artist-imaginer’s art, with a highly personal, symbolic and cosmogonic iconography (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal forms, and animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…) set against a background with no perspective (deliberately distanced from painting). In his most ambitious Cartoons, it was intended to share both a poetic vision (he sometimes even intersperses these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed from the war on: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…), culminating in the “Chant du Monde” (Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), unfinished at his death.

Notre tapisserie reprend un vers du « Coq » d’Aragon, évoqué de façon plus extensive dans « Oiseau de toutes les couleurs » (carton de 1948 dont un exemplaire est conservé à la Cité de la Tapisserie, à Aubusson). Le mot comme motif plastique est récurrent chez Lurçat ; ici, il permet une concordance thématique et symbolique (le coq), politique et historique (la Résistance, le PCF).

Bibliography:
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939–1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Exhibition cat. Lurçat, 10 years later, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976
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
Exhibition cat. Dialogues with Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Exhibition cat. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Exhibition cat. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016
Exhibition cat. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016