Jean Lurçat

Lurçat's body of work is immense; yet it is his role in the renewal of the art of tapestry that has secured his lasting legacy. Starting in 1917, he began with works on canvas, and then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he also discovers, at the same time, the Apocalyse tapestry series at Angers, which definitively prompts him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed technical questions first with François Tabard, and then, upon his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: gros point, counted tones, drawn cartoons, Numbered. A gigantic production then begins (more than 1000 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 tireless promoter of the medium across the world. His woven work bears witness to a specifically decorative imagier-like art, with a highly personal, symbolic iconography that is cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal motifs, and animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…) set against a background without perspective (deliberately distant from painting).

A gigantic production then begins (more than 1000 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 tireless promoter of the medium across the world.

His woven work bore witness to an imagier’s art that was specifically decorative, with a highly personal, symbolic iconography—cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the four elements…), stylized vegetal motifs, animal figures (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…)—standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately set apart from painting). It was intended, in its most ambitious Cartoons, to share a vision that was both poetic (he even sometimes inlaid these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes were addressed from the war: liberty, resistance, fraternity, truth…). Its culminating point would be the “Chant du Monde” ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Hôpital Saint-Jean, Angers), left unfinished at his death.

The theme of the dressed table was a recurring leitmotif in Lurçat from the 1940s (cf. Les quatre coins, 1943, Atelier Goubely-Gatien , Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat and the contemporary tapestry). These tables—sometimes very “horns of abundance”—and often accompanied by musical instruments (mandolin in general) echoed the still-life paintings of the seventeenth century, a theme that was, moreover, foreign to the tapestry of the time.

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 au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016