A jack-of-all-trades is often a master of none—although not in the case of Alfred Latour. From painting and drawing to typography, textile design, and photojournalism, the multidisciplinary artist used every tool at his disposal in his quest to uncover the power of form. “In each field of expression that he took up, he was soon compared to the best,” says Pierre Starobinski, director of the Alfred Latour Foundation. “When he engraved, he was compared to Félix Vallotton; when he photographed, he was compared to Eugène Atget; when he designed for the textile industry, the critics of his time dubbed him the Bach of design.”
Fabric design for Pierre Aynard et Cie, 1948, graphite and gouache on paper.
Courtesy of Alfred Latour Foundation
Flowers, 1950, oil on canvas.
Courtesy of Alfred Latour FoundationBorn in Paris in 1888, the son of a typographer at the French National Printworks, Latour seemed to have an innate understanding of form and line. When he enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs at age 20, his professors encouraged him to develop his burgeoning talent by focusing on engraving and typography, leading to a commission from the Arts et Métiers to create a reference book of typographical and logo designs that was widely distributed throughout France. Still, he refused to be pigeonholed into one medium, and continued experimenting in everything from woodblock to watercolor to photography as a means of refining his craft. Recognition from prestigious salons followed, as did an offer from Charles Bianchini, cofounder of the renowned Lyonnais silk manufacturer Bianchini-Férier, to join their team of designers alongside Raoul Dufy.
Eygalières, Soleil Noir, 1962, oil on cavas.
Courtesy of Alfred Latour FoundationLatour’s work as a textile designer relied heavily on the oscillation created by varying line thickness and color, a style reminiscent of Orphism, the art movement developed by Sonia and Robert Delaunay, which emphasized the dynamic tensions between adjacent colors. As a member of The Union des Artistes Modernes—the French equivalent of the Bauhaus—he joined luminaries like Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Eileen Gray, and Charlotte Perriand in their rejection of traditional decorative arts. Explains Starobinski, “Latour was part of the modernism movement of his time, which moved from the figurative to the simplification of forms, culminating in abstraction.”
Study for Toiles de Fontenay, 1945-1952, graphite and gouache on paper.
Courtesy of Alfred Latour Foundation
Fabric design for Pierre Aynard et Cie, 1948, graphite and gouache on paper.
Courtesy of Alfred Latour FoundationJust before the Second World War, Latour left Paris with his family and settled in the Provençal town of Eygalières. From his country retreat, he accepted only projects that would expand his artistic practice. The most signifcant was a commission from his friend Pierre Aynard, scion of a wealthy textile and banking family, to design modern reinterpretations of historic tapestries inspired by Fontenay Abbey, a 12th-century Cistercian monastery owned by the Aynards. The result was the Toiles de Fontenay, a series of large-scale printed wall hangings completed in 1950. “Taking motifs from Romanesque architecture as a starting point and presenting them on a wall canvas, imagined as interior decor, was an innovative approach for the time,” says Starobinski of the series with its simplified forms in bold colors.
Frontispiece for Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire, 1928, wood engraving.
COURTESY OF ALFRED LATOUR FOUNDATIONTheir power still resonates some 75 years later, even as Latour’s name has receded. “His work had an astonishingly colorful modernity—uncluttered, graphic, bathed in an innate sense of color and imbued with a unique eye,” says Cheryl Raman, cofounder with Sébastien Barcet of Lyonnais wallpaper company Le Presse Papier, which recently restored a dozen of Latour’s gouaches to create a collection of striking new designs. Latour’s foundation, dedicated to supporting young artists in Europe, continues his typographic legacy by funding projects that celebrate the art of lines on a page. “His art is a wonderful tool to help younger generations remember the works that preceded them,” says Starobinski. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say that today’s creative output often draws inspiration from works like Latour’s—works that, for a time, fade from view, only to resurface and shape the current artistic vocabulary.”
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