Mathieu MATEGOT was born on April 4, 1910 in Tapio-Sully, Hungary. He spends four years, from 1925 to 1929, at the Budapest School of Fine Arts, then travels to Italy, the USA and, in 1931, settles in France. He started as a window dresser at Galeries Lafayette and Toile d’avion, then from 1933, he made rattan furniture mounted on metal: Important but anonymous works. During the war he enlisted, was taken prisoner, and resumed a new activity in 1945. He creates models of decorative or usual objects in transparent metal, whose manufacture he industrializes. He sets up a small factory in Paris and then in Casablanca. On the other hand also, since 1945, he draws cardboards of tapestries edited in Aubusson by Tabard. From 1952, he exposes to the living rooms of the Artists Decorators and of Autumn of which he is a member, to the Independents, to the house of the French thought, to the pavilion of Marsan (Arts of the table), and participates in all the big exhibitions abroad, North and South America, Warsaw, London, Biennial of Venice, etc….
Active member of the society of encouragement to the Art and to the industry, of the association of the cardboard painters, a tapestry of Matégot was acquired by the state Matégot has two activities rigorously independent and opposite:
Decorator, he chose rattan as material, but uses it according to a personal technique: frequent alliance of lacquered iron and rattan but in all cases, the braided fiber is always mounted on metal ;
Colorist, he opposes the black or natural rattan to the pure and bright tones of rustic fabrics (recent installation of the bar, reading room and terrace of the Tit Mellil airfield in Casablanca).
On the other hand, and complementary to these furniture sets, Matégot is the inventor of charming everyday objects: Rolling tables, umbrella holders, baskets, baskets, flower holders, flowerpot covers, etc. … in transparent metal, perforated sheet metal or rigitulle sometimes pleated like a fabric. For all these minor and often obsolete objects, he designed new, practical, fun shapes using a manufactured material, he treated it in his small workshop in La Vilette according to a technique and with a handcrafted care. Painter, Decorator of Theater, at the same time, Matégot, accustomed to the mural optics chose a mode of expression more satisfying for his personality of Artist: The Tapestry.
Friend of Jean Lurçat, he began after having adopted the principles of the renovation of this Art, big stitch and restricted number of tones, to undergo his influence then freed himself from it to adopt a rigorously abstract conception.