Little Spring (Petit printemps)

Over the course of his career, Mario Prassinos designed some 150 tapestries, most of which were woven at the Atelier Suzanne Goubely in Aubusson, in central France. He wrote about tapestry, was a member of the Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters (APCT), and was one of the artists—most notably Jean Lurçat—who contributed to the revival of this medium in the twentieth century. “I became interested in the art of tapestry, particularly because I was excited by the numbered cartoon technique, consisting of the fabrication of a colored mental image using code […] Tapestry is an essential exercise. As I practiced it, it is perhaps the desire to interrogate, down to the finest detail, a work which exists in two dimensions,” he wrote in the catalog for his 1983 retrospective in Aix-en-Provence.

“Little Spring” is marked by a restricted palette in shades of brown and beige. The web-like foliage creates an indeterminate, somewhat dark atmosphere—an interesting counterpoint to the quiet joy or hope evoked by the title.