Papillons (Butterflies)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton wokshop.
With label.
Circa 1960.
Lurçat’s body of work is immense: nevertheless, it is his role in the renewal of the art of tapestry that earned him lasting fame. As early as 1917, he began with works in needlework canvas, then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he simultaneously discovers the Apocalypse tapestry of Angers, which definitively leads him to devote himself to tapestry. He first tackled technical questions with François Tabard, and then, at the time of his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: large point, counted tones, numbered cartoons. A vast production then begins (more than 1000 cartoons), amplified by his determination to involve his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), and his collaboration with the Galerie La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then through his role as an tireless promoter of the medium around the world. His woven work testifies to an art of the image-maker, specifically decorative, in a very personal, symbolic iconography, cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal forms, and animal motifs (goats, cocks, butterflies, chimeras…), set against a background without perspective (deliberately removed from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious cartoons, to share at once a poetic vision (he even sometimes inscribes these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes are taken up from the war onwards: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…); its culminating point will be the “Chant du Monde” ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death.
His trip to Brazil in 1954 was a major source of inspiration for Lurçat: the Amazonian flora and fauna (particularly butterflies, a frequent theme) began to appear repeatedly in his work: “What interests me about the butterfly, …, is the extraordinary creativity embodied in the interplay of forms, the sparkle of the colours, that sense of spontaneity in the colouring…” (Claude Faux, Lurçat à haute voix, 1962, p. 151). Butterflies against a yellow background recur in several sketches: “Paon de nuit”, “Copacabana”, “Papillons Marcenac”,…
Bibliography :
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939–1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat, Nice, Musée des Ponchettes, 1968
Exh. Cat. Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d’Art moderne of the city of Paris, 1976
Exh. Cat. Les domaines of Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la Tapisserie Contemporaine, 1986
Symposium Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, 1992
Exh. Cat. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016
Exh. Cat. Jean Lurçat, la terre, le feu, l’eau, l’air, Perpignan, Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud, 2024
