Synthesis
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Hamot workshop. 1961. Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated back to 1943: he then produced cartoons for the liner « la Marseillaise ». Close to Lurçat, whose theories he adopted (limited tones, Numbered cartoons, …), he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie), and soon became a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned him to produce many woven cartoons, mostly at Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were those for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the liner France, or the Prefecture of the Creuse,…. If the designs by Picart le Doux were close to those of Lurçat, so were his sources of inspiration and themes, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the celestial bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds…), humankind, texts,…. « Synthèse » took up the motifs of « Cosmogonie » (1948): scientific knowledge was precisely synthesized through the presence of an astrolabe, a compass, a pyramid, a book of natural history…. Bibliographie : Marthe Belle-Joufray, Jean Picart le Doux, Publications filmées d’art et d’histoire, 1966, n°15 Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972, n°107 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
