Jean Lurçat (1892-1966)- The Red Archer. 20th Century Aubusson Tapestry

*Jean LURCAT (Bruyère, 1892- Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1966)- The Red Archer, circa 1957-1959.
Executed from an original cartoon (n°1007) by the artist, this large rectangular panel woven by the *Ateliers Tabard Frères et Soeurs Lissiers in Aubusson portrays the martial effigy of an Archer on a black background. Inspired by the heroic deities haunting ancient Greco-Roman myths or creatures associated with the astrological imagination -Sagittarius, tutelary figure for Lurçat of the creative act engendering a poetic vision of the World-, this sculptural warrior represented profiled like ceramic works from Antiquity or Haute-Lisse from the Medieval period, a bent bow in hand, darts its striped arrow towards the lunar star. Meaning here the twilight dimension of Man, this symbol, related to nocturnal daydreams, is eclipsed in the hanging by the central and radiating one of the Solar Eye-symbol linked to the creative principle of the Universe, generator of life as well as plenitude. earthly. In this "eye stuck in the Light", spurring the step, the gestures of the archaic figure represented, the artist gives us his personal vision of "the Man who knows how to see, and believes, and likes to know by trying to reach the heart of things", and who within the sidereal space, "sings of hope in front of the sun".
 Incandescent, brightly colored, glowing, starry trails, stars, autumnal leaves cross, constellate, punctuate the field of the tapestry punctuated in its upper part with a wide whitish gap: underlined on its sinuous outline by small bursts, this large flat color to the arborescent luminosity seems an evocation of the Milky Way. She crowns the impetuous and flamboyant Archer-Sagittarius whose Jean Lurçat from 1927 (L'Archer, 1927, needlepoint canvas, Musée d'Angers) loved to decline in various mediums the vital impetus, the aspirations at the height of his epic dimensions of an Odyssey of the Contemporary World Sagittarius, central figure of the 8th tapestry constituting Le Chant du Monde, 1959, masterpiece of the Upholsterer-Poet kept at the Museum of Angers; The Archer to the Stars, 1956; Sagittarius, from the illustrated book The Signs of the Zodiac, 1959, Photolithography, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec).