Composition
Tapestry, probably from Aubusson. Circa 1970.
If the move toward abstraction took place for Lanskoy from the 1940s onward, his earliest Cartoons date from the 1950s: they would therefore all be abstract. First woven in Aubusson at Picaud, he then entrusted most of his Cartoons to Maurice Chassagne (with no atelier mark and no authenticity label (bolduc) ever appearing on the tapestries he wove), but it was also woven at the Manufactures Nationales, and “Consolation” adorned the ocean liner “France,” a testament to the artist’s place in French art history. A major protagonist of lyrical abstraction, defended by the leading galleries of the time (Jeanne Bucher, Louis Carré), Lanskoy—whose exuberant painting sometimes unfolded into color fantasies (the pinks, the mauves, the oranges… have regularly been given their due)—managed to do without the characteristic impastos when it came to being woven. Likewise, the lyricism of the forms often appears there in a more restrained manner.
