Plain-chant
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Legoueix workshop.
With signed label, n°1/4.
1974.
Sautour-Gaillard had his first cartoon woven in 1971 by the Legoueix workshop (a collaboration which was to last), and from then on he designed many very large-scale projects of which the most spectacular was “Pour un certain idéal” a series of 17 tapestries dealing with the theme of Olympianism (property of the Musée de l’Olympisme in Lausanne). If at first close to lyrical abstraction, the artist produced in the 1990’s cartoons superimposing different decorative motifs, textures and figures whose unity originated in the woven texture itself.
The graphic characters which figure here suggest calligraphy and are characteristic of this artist’s tapestries from 1973 – 74, using these same colours. Here is how, in reference to Music, he defined his work at the time : “From my earliest efforts, I chose to make work which would not be a synthesis of images but rather construed as the orchestration of an architecture of colours … The sensation of an imperceptible rustling as when the careful listening to a concert becomes tapestry.”
Bibliography :
D. Cavelier, Jean-René Sautour-Gaillard, la déchirure, Lelivredart, 2013, ill. p.172-173
