Emile Gilioli – Fall of Icarus. Wool tapestry woven at the Atelier Raymond Picaud Aubusson.
“First of all I like wool, its warmth…In tapestry, I can use both colour and graphic design” Wrote the artist in “Sculpture” Paris, 1968.
Better known as a sculptor, Gilioli would design his first cartoon in 1949, before winning in 1957 the Tapestry Prize at the Biennial in Sao Paulo ; in all he designed around a hundred tapestries, woven by the Pinton and Picaud workshops.
Dating from 1966, this work marks the artist’s transition in his work for the loom : a move away from the drawing-oriented cartoons of his initial period, here we have more or less geometrical rings (although their colour is mottled), while the surprising pink background, which at first glance appears to be uniform, actually reveals gradual shading resembling molten wax as if alluding to the melting of Icarus’s wings.