Maurice André

Maurice André stayed in Aubusson throughout the war. Founder of the cooperative group 'Tapisserie de France', and member of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Tapestry Cartoonists), he developed a personal aesthetic, far from Lurçat, made of rigorous cubist flat areas, in a often purified chromatic range, and received ambitious public commissions, for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg ('A United Europe in Work and Peace'), or the French Pavilion for the 1958 Exhibition in Brussels ('Modern Technology in the Service of Man'). Naturally (and like Wogensky, Prassinos,…), he then evolved towards abstraction, first rather lyrical then in a style increasingly geometric, in a trajectory very close to that of Matégot.

In the mid-1960s, André's style became closer to that of Matégot, where beating, stitching, and stippling were the norm. In its theme, treatment, chromatic range, and format, our cartoon is close to 'Grand Nocturne', preserved at the Jean Lurçat Museum and the Contemporary Tapestry Museum in Angers.