Jean Lurçat

Lurçat’s œuvre was immense: however, it was his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him a place in posterity. As early as 1917, he began with works on canvas; then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dated from 1937, when he also discovered, at the same time, the Angers Apocalypse tapestry hanging, which definitively prompted him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed the technical questions first with François Tabard, and then, during his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: large point, counted tones, drawn Cartoons, Numbered. A gigantic output then began (more than 1,000 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 tireless propagator of the medium across the world. His Woven work bears witness to an art of the “imager” that was specifically decorative, with a highly personal, symbolic iconography—cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal, and animal (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…)—all set against a background without perspective (deliberately removed from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious Cartoons, to share both a poetic vision (he even sometimes embellished these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed from the war onward: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…), the culminating point of which would be the “Chant du Monde” ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. The motif of the owl (rather a little owl, in fact), with outstretched wings, a tutelary and protective figure, unfolded from the 1950s onward. One of the most famous photographs of the artist shows him with arms spread, his hands on his bald skull, with behind/above him such an owl. 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