Tapestry woven at the Raymond Picard Aubusson workshop, France.
With signed label. Circa 1960.
Size US: 55 x 81 in
Size Europe: 140 x 205 cm
Mid-Century tapestry designed by Maurice Andre (1914-1985) and woven at Atelier Pinton Freres in Aubusson, France. Woven in wool, it dates to the 1960s. The artist's name is woven in the lower left corner and the monogram for the atelier is woven in the lower right corner.
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.
Characteristic of André’s final period, the geometric shapes and flat areas of colour are tempered by hatching, stripes and shading.