Mourlot Studios
The Mourlot Studios were in 1852 by the family Mourlot than printing in Paris founded. The company also became known under the names Imprimerie Mourlot, Mourlot Frères and Atelier Mourlot.
history
Founded by François Mourlot, the printing company began producing exclusive wall murals. In 1914 his son Jules Mourlot expanded the business and produced chocolate stickers for companies such as Chocolat Poulain, as well as books, cards and stationery. In the 1920s, Jules' son, Fernand Mourlot , converted one of the locations into a studio and dedicated it exclusively to the printing of lithographs .
One of the main products of the Mourlot studio was art posters. Mourlot became known through commissions for the production of exhibition posters for French museums, for example in 1930 for the retrospective of Eugène Delacroix in the Louvre , in 1932 for an exhibition by Édouard Manets in the Musée de l'Orangerie and in 1934 for Honoré Daumier's work in the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
Another important function should be the production of fine arts, limited edition lithographs . The first painters who created lithographs at Mourlot were Vlaminck and Utrillo . Despite its great fame and popularity in the 19th century, lithography was not used by most artists in the first part of the 20th century.
Invented by Aloys Senefelder in the late 18th century, lithography became famous when it was adopted by artists such as Jules Chéret , Toulouse-Lautrec , Bonnard and Vuillard in the 1880s. In the 1930s, Fernand Mourlot began inviting a new generation of artists to work directly on the stone.
In 1937 the studio produced two posters, one by Bonnard and one by Henri Matisse , for the Maitres de l'Art indépendant exhibition at the Petit Palais . Both works were rated as excellent and of the highest quality, even by the artists themselves. As a result, Mourlot was named the leading lithographic printer. In 1937 the studio began a long collaboration with the publisher Tériade , founder of the art journal Verve . After the Second World War, Mourlot supported Matisse, Braque , Bonnard, Rouault and Joan Miró in the creation of important lithographs as a retrospective and reminder of their work.
In 1945, Pablo Picasso chose the Mourlot studio for his return to the lithographic medium. It should soon be his new home for a few months at a time. Between 1945 and 1969, Picasso created over four hundred lithographs for Mourlot. This collaboration not only led to groundbreaking innovations in the lithography process, but also added a whole new dimension to Picasso's work.
literature
- Souvenirs et portraits d'artistes. Ed .: Fernand Mourlot Alain Mazo, Paris, and Léon Amiel, New York (1972).
- Gravés dans ma mémoire. Fernand Mourlot, Edition Robert Laffont, Paris 1979.
- A même la pierre. Fernand Mourlot Lithographe, text by Castor Seibel, Pierre Bordas & Fils, Paris 1982.
- Twentieth Century Posters. Fernand Mourlot, Wellfleet Press, Secaucus, New York 1989.