Vintage French Jean Lurçat Tapestry

Vintage French Jean Lurçat woven tapestry, circa 1950, depicting a ram, in polychrome on a black ground with stars and abstract forms with a printed Lurçat signature & original tag. Jean Lurçat (1892-1966) was introduced to art by his parents and by Victor Prouve, the founder of the Ecole de Nancy. In October 1912 he went to Paris, where he put into practice Prouve’s ideas at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later at the Academie Colarossi as a pupil of the engraver Bernard Naudin (1876-1946). In November 1912 Lurcat founded the review Les Feuilles de mai, which contained articles on art by Elie Faure and Antoine Bourdelle and his own essays on ‘the positive sense of life and art’. Watching his mother sew inspired him to have her transform his paintings into tapestries. Tapestries were made based on his gouaches Little Green Girls (Berkeley, U. CA, A. Mus.) and Evening in Granada (Paris, priv. col.), which combine severe design with rich color. In 1917 he held his first exhibition in Zurich, of paintings inspired by Cubism (in particular the work of Georges Braque) and by Matisse’s drawings. Several were subsequently produced as tapestries by the Hennebert workshops(1920–24).