Jean Lurçat

Lurçat’s work is immense: however, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that has secured his place in posterity. As early as 1917, he began with canvas-based works, and 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 cycle of Angers, which definitively led him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed 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 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—then, through his tireless role in promoting the medium throughout the world. His Woven work bears witness to an art of the imaginative, specifically decorative, with a highly personal, symbolic iconography that is cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal motifs, and animals (goats, cocks, butterflies, chimeras…) standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately distant from painting). Intended, in his most ambitious Cartoons, to share a vision that is both poetic (he also sometimes embellishes these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes were addressed from the war onward: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…). Its culminating point would be the “Chant du Monde” (“Song of the World”) ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. In the long and varied genealogy of Lurçat’s cocks, our “sabre-bearing cock” (a pleonasm?!), is a late figure (only 1961), but it is in part a reverse reprise of the “Warrior,” much earlier, from which come the typical tricolour emblems of the creations from the War. One example is preserved at the Cité de la Tapisserie, Aubusson. 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, Denise Majorel, une vie pour la tapisserie, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, reproduit p.59 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013, reproduit fig.154 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