Alfred Latour Collection
After several months of work, we are particularly proud to welcome to our guest collections Alfred Latour, a multifaceted artist, painter, silk designer, and photographer whose career intersected for a time with Lyon's textile history.
Thanks to our meticulous restoration of his gouaches (filling in gaps, carefully and precisely matching colors, and blending them), we are publishing a series of wallpapers that highlight the artist's skill as a colorist.
We are also contributing to the exhibition “ALFRED LATOUR, A LOOK AT FORM” at the Musée Réattu Arles, which will be held from April 26, 2024 and during the Rencontres de la photographie Arles until October 6, 2024.
Exhibition in collaboration with the Alfred Latour Foundation the Musée des Tissus de Lyon, the Musée Réattu Arles and Le Presse Papier.
Painter, wood engraver, watercolorist, illustrator, photographer, bookbinder, and textile designer, Alfred Latour (August 27, 1888 – March 2, 1964) was a multifaceted artist. The wide variety of techniques and media he experimented with throughout his career allowed him to demonstrate the breadth of his boundless creativity, a quality with which Le Presse Papier particularly recognizes itself.
Gifted in drawing, and having completed his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Latour continued his training independently, notably through his exposure to museum collections, before enrolling at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where he was encouraged to pursue painting and engraving. He won the Grand Prize at theInternational Exhibition of Decorative Arts and received two awards at the Salon d'Automne.
A free spirit and jack-of-all-trades, seemingly resistant to being confined to a single style or belonging to a defined group, Latour nevertheless joined theUnion of Modern Artists (UAM), founded by Mallet-Stevens , which brought together decorative artists and architects. Advocating function, modernity, and the accessibility of all art forms to everyone, in the spirit of the German Bauhaus, the UAM appealed to the artist who had always worked towards the modernization and simplification of forms.
It is his graphic talent, particularly evident in his work with Lyon textiles, that has captured our attention. In the 1930s, Charles Bianchini of the Bianchini-Férier fashion called upon him to succeed Raoul Dufy, the house's artistic director for over 15 years.
It was also Pierre Aynard, a Lyon-based publisher of printed fabrics, who, through his friendship with Latour, commissioned him between 1945 and 1952 to create designs for haute couture as well as canvases to revive the tradition of wall hangings for Fontenay Abbey, resulting in the "Toiles de Fontenay" (Fontenay Canvases).
Refined, graphic, bathed in an innate sense of color and imbued with a unique vision, Latour's work exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Library of France, the Museum of Textiles in Lyon… has been and remains astonishingly colorfully modern, where form comes to life to dress the space.
