Marcel GROMAIRE

The woven work by Gromaire is modest: 11 Cartoons, designed between 1938 and 1944, most of them in Aubusson itself. “His rigorous constructions, his simplifications, his taste for grand compositions and great fundamental ideas, his knowledge as a colorist, and—put briefly—his supreme quality as a master and as a worker, all of this was destined to make him one of the most perfect tapestry-makers of his time,” Jean Cassou (Cat. Expo. Marcel Gromaire, Paris, Musée National d’art moderne, 1963) would say. It was Guillaume Janneau, head of the Mobilier National, who called on him in 1938, convinced that his style (simplification of forms, geometric drawing outlined in blacks, the influence of Cubism, a limited palette,…) would answer the new aesthetic problems that tapestry had to solve in order to be reborn (simplified color ranges, synthetic Cartoons,…): first with a commission on the theme of the four elements, followed by another (“the Seasons”), intended to be executed in Aubusson. In 1940, Gromaire joined Lurçat and Dubreuil there. Working alone, meticulously (many drawings were preparatory to the Cartoon, painted, and not numbered as in Lurçat’s case), and in close collaboration with Suzanne Goubely, who wove all his Cartoons, he spent 4 years in Aubusson, devoting all his creative energies to tapestry. After the war, he left the Creuse and would no longer make Cartoons, leaving to Lurçat the place of great initiator of the revival of tapestry. “‘Aubusson’ is one of the 5 Cartoons designed by Gromaire for the Goubely workshop during the War, and it is emblematic of his ‘stained-glass’ style—teeming with life and made geometric. And although one recognizes some of Aubusson’s emblematic monuments (the clock tower, the church of Ste-Croix…), what Gromaire discovers is that the town appears cramped, in a harsh and savage nature (to which the artist proved particularly sensitive, as shown by his many drawings) made of cliffs and tumultuous waterways. Interestingly, one copy, re-woven in 1960, appeared on the liner ‘France’—the only tapestry whose design predates the décor commission. What better symbol of how a medium (tapestry), and a subject (the land of France, its landscapes, its terroirs), as vectors of tradition, could simultaneously embody the modernity carried by the ‘style France’ (Bruno Foucart) and by the liner ‘France’ itself. Bibliography : Tapisseries contemporaines Lurçat Gromaire, éditions Braun et cie, 1943, ill. Le Point, Aubusson et la renaissance de la tapisserie, March 1946, ill. Formes et couleurs, n°5-6, 1942, ill. L’amour de l’art, la tapisserie Française, 1946, ill. p.185 Jean Lurçat, Tapisserie française, Bordas, 1947 J. Cassou, M. Damain, R. Moutard-Uldry, la tapisserie française et les peintres cartonniers, Tel, 1957 Colloque, Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la tapisserie, 1992 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, compagnons de route et passants considérables, Eglise de Felletin, 1992, ill. p. 25 (and detail on the cover) Cat. Expo., Gromaire, œuvre tissée, Aubusson, Musée de la tapisserie, 1995, ill. p. 53 (and on the cover) Cat. Expo. La manufacture des Gobelins dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, Beauvais, Galerie nationale de la tapisserie, 1999 Armelle Bouchet Mazas, le paquebot France, Paris, 2006, ill. p.67 Aubusson, Cité internationale de la tapisserie, guide du visiteur, 2016, ill.p.57