Marc Saint-Saëns

Marc Saint-Saëns was born in 1903 into a family of shopkeepers and craftsmen from the Languedoc region. During his youth, Marc Saint-Saëns was the best friend of the poet Pierre Frayssinet, who was his classmate at the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat in Toulouse where he also met André Arbus. Gifted for drawing, he enrolled at the Toulouse School of Fine Arts in 1920, with André Arbus and Joseph Monin. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in 1922, and in 1923 he entered the École des beaux-arts de Paris. The creation of the fresco for the reading room of the Study and Heritage Library in Toulouse, completed in 1935, launched his career as a decorator of public buildings. From the 1940s onwards, under the influence of Jean Lurçat, he turned to painting tapestry cartoons which would make him famous. It was at his side that he took part in the foundation of the Association of Tapestry Cardboard Painters (APCT) in 1947. He had almost all his cardboards woven by the Tabard workshop in Aubusson, the capital of tapestry. 1951 is the great moment of national and international recognition with the masterpieces: the tapestries ‘Le Serpent de mer rose’, and ‘Le Bouquet’, his favourite work. Le Bouquet, the internationally acclaimed work of Marc Saint-Saëns in 1951 was the artist’s favourite work, according to his wife.