Jean Lurçat

L’Œuvre de Lurçat is immense: however, it was his role in the renewal of the art of tapestry that earned him a lasting place in history. As early as 1917, he began with canvas designs, then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he discovered at the same time the Apocalypse tapestry series of Angers, which definitively prompted him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed technical questions first with François Tabard, and then, when he was installed in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: large point, counted tones, drawn Cartoons Numbered. A gigantic production then began (more than 1000 Cartoons), amplified by his desire to involve 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 indefatigable promoter of the medium across the world. His Woven work demonstrates an art of the image-maker that is specifically decorative, with a highly personal symbolic iconography that is cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal imagery, and animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…), which stand out against a background without perspective (intentionally far removed from painting), and in his most ambitious Cartoons is intended to share both a poetic vision (he even sometimes embellishes these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed as early as the war: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…); and its culminating point will be the “Chant du Monde” (Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. In a harmony of restrained, nuanced colors, the theme of the set table takes on new resonance, as if crushed by the sun of the equinox, which gains the upper hand over the customary still lifes of game, langoustines, and mandolins. Bibliography : Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 ans après, 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 Cat. Expo. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016