Jean Lurçat

Lurçat’s body of work is immense: however, it is his role in the renovation of tapestry art that has ensured his place in posterity. As early as 1917, he began with canevas works, then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he discovered—simultaneously—the Angers Apocalypse tapestry hanging, which definitively prompted him to devote himself to tapestry. He first addressed technical questions with François Tabard, then, when he was installed in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: bold point, counted tones, drawn Cartoons, Numbered. A gigantic production then began (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 gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then by his role as an tireless propagator of the medium throughout the world. His woven work bears witness to an artist-imagier’s art that is specifically decorative, with a highly personal symbolic iconography, cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, 4 elements…), stylized vegetal imagery, and animals (goats, cocks, butterflies, chimeras…) set against a background without perspective (deliberately distant from painting), and intended, in its most ambitious Cartoons, to share both a poetic vision (these tapestries also sometimes include quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed from the war onwards: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…), with its culminating point being the « Chant du Monde » ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Hôpital Saint-Jean, Angers), left unfinished at his death. An admirer of dogs, Lurçat had Afghan hounds. If they are found literally in his Cartoons, the theme of the dog, always surrounded by sharp foliage, was omnipresent in the late 1940s: “Green Dog” is particularly close to “Basset”, contemporary. Bibliography : Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Cat.Expo. Jean Lurçat, Nice, Musée des Ponchettes, 1968 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, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Meister der französischen Moderne, Halle, Kunsthalle, 2016, reproduit p.76 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, la terre, le feu, l’eau, l’air, Perpignan, Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud, 2024