Le soleil d’Apremont (the sun of Apremont)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop.
With signed label, no. 1/4.
Circa 1965.
Maurice André settled in Aubusson for the duration of the second world war. A founding member of the group “Tapisserie de France” and a member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie), he developed a personal style, different from that of Lurçat, characterised by rigorous, cubist-influenced flat areas of colour, often using a limited palette ; he received large-scale public commissions for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (“L’Europe unie dans le Travail et la Paix”) or for the French pavilion at the Brussels Exhibition in 1958 (“La Technique moderne au service de l’Homme”). Gradually (as with Wogensky and Prassinos,…) his style evolved towards more abstraction, firstly lyrical and then more and more geometric, in a way very similar to Matégot.
In the mid-1960s, André’s style began to resemble that of Matégot, characterised by lyrical compositions of triangular shapes, in a uniform colour palette, and dotted with streaks, spots and patches – often black – in which various techniques specific to tapestry were employed to accentuate the sense of volume and depth.
