Jean Lurçat

L’Œuvre de Lurçat est immense : it is nevertheless his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him lasting fame. As early as 1917, he began with works on canvas-weave, and then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, at the same time as he discovered 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, on the occasion of his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: gros point, counted tones, drawn Cartoons, Numbered. A gigantic production then began (more than 1000 Cartoons), amplified by his desire to bring along his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), and collaboration with the gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, then by his role as an tireless propagator of the medium across the world. His woven work bears witness to a specifically decorative “imagier” art, with a highly personal, symbolic iconography that is cosmological (sun, planets, zodiac, the four elements…), stylized vegetal, and animal (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…), set against a background with no perspective (deliberately removed from painting). Destined, in his most ambitious Cartoons, to share a vision that is both poetic (he even sometimes “enamelled” these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes were addressed already during the war: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…), and whose culminating point would be the “Chant du Monde” ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. “Univers végétal” is a paradox: there one sees more animals than plants. One already observes (from 1944 onwards) this desire to partition space that Lurçat would develop in his cabinets and other bestiaries: stuffed animals, like curiosities in a cabinet, rest on shelves suspended by chains, under starry skies, in a poetic extension aimed at translating the Unity of Nature. The tapestry was woven in different formats, as shown by the 1946 exhibition: vertical and square (2 x 2 m, and 3 x 3 m), for Jansen, a Parisian decorator, whose brand appears woven, even though he had no workshop in Aubusson (the Dumontet workshop was responsible for his weaving). Bibliographie : Cat. Expo. La tapisserie française, Musée d’Art moderne, Paris, 1946, n°278-279 Sieben Jahrhunderte Französische Wandteppiche, Wort und Tat, ill. Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957, ill n°31, 99 (détails) Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, tapisseries de la fondation Rothmans, Musée de Metz, 1969, cat. n°6 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