Alfred Latour Collection
After several months of work, we are particularly proud to welcome to our guest collections: Alfred Latour , protean artist, painter, silk designer, photographer whose career crossed for a time the textile history of Lyon.
Thanks to our meticulous work of restoring his gouaches (recovery of gaps, fine and precise research of colors, connections, etc.) we are publishing a series of wallpapers which highlight the artist's work as a colorist.
We are also contributing to the exhibition “ ALFRED LATOUR, REGARD SUR LA FORME ” at the Musée Réattu Arles which will be held from April 26, 2024 and during Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles until October 6, 2024.
Exhibition in collaboration with the Foundation Alfred Latour the Lyon Fabric Museum , the Réattu Museum Arles and Le Presse Papier .
Painter, wood engraver, watercolorist, illustrator, photographer, bookbinder and textile designer, Alfred Latour (August 27, 1888 – March 2, 1964) is a multifaceted artist. The wide variety of techniques and media that he experiments with throughout his career will allow him to show the extent of limitless creativity in which Le Presse Papier recognizes itself particularly well.
Gifted for drawing, flying through the Beaux-Arts of Paris , Latour continued his training as an autodidact, notably in contact with museum collections before joining the Decorative Arts of Paris where he was encouraged to continue painting and engraving. He won the grand prize at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and was awarded twice at the Salon d'Automne.
A free electron and jack of all trades, seeming reluctant to confine himself to a register, to belong to a defined group, Latour nevertheless joined the Union of Modern Artists founded by Mallet Stevens which brought together decorative artists and architects. Advocating function, modernity, accessibility of all forms of art to all, in the spirit of the German Bauhaus, the UAM appeals to the artist who has always worked on the modernization and simplification of forms.
It is here his graphic talent, notably implemented in Lyon textiles, which caught our attention since in the 1930s, Charles Bianchini of the Bianchini-Férier called on him to take over from Raoul Dufy , director artistic of the house for more than 15 years.
It is also the Lyonnais Pierre Aynard , publisher of printed fabrics, who, through his friendship with Latour, will offer him between 45 and 52 to carry out projects for haute couture as well as canvases in order to bring up to date the stretched canvas wall for the abbey of Fontenay leading to the Toiles de Fontenay.
Pure, graphic, bathed in an innate sense of color and imbued with a unique perspective, Latour's work exhibited at the Center Pompidou , at the British Museum , at the Victoria and Albert Museum , at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France , at the Musée des Tissus de Lyon… was and remains an astonishingly colorful modernity where the form comes to life to dress the space.
