Mathieu Matégot was born in 1910 à Tápió-Sully, Hungary. He studied at the Beaux-Arts in Budapest, where he acquired training in the plastic arts and architecture. In 1931, he moved to Paris, where he quickly became part of the artistic and decorative scene. During the 1930s, he worked as a decorator, notably for the theatre and for department stores' windows, while producing his first pieces of furniture in rattan combined with metal structures.
His career was marked by the Second World War: taken prisoner after enlisting, he discovered metalworking techniques during his captivity that would have a profound influence on his creative work. On his return to Paris in 1944, after becoming a naturalised French citizen, he opened a workshop dedicated to furniture and decorative objects. He experimented with different materials to create modern furniture that combined functionality, flexibility and structural elegance.
In the 1950s, Matégot develops a personal formal language based on the use of the perforated metal, he works it like a flexible material. He created a technique that he sometimes called " rigitulle "This involves folding, modelling or hanging perforated sheeting to give it a visual lightness reminiscent of fabric. This process led to his best-known works, including the chair Nagasaki or the armchair Copacabana, these pieces have become emblems of post-war modernist furniture.
His furniture is characterised by the combination of simple, industrial materials with light, graphic forms. Matégot designs tables, consoles, sideboards and lighting fixtures in which metal forms aerial silhouettes. His work met with considerable success, and his furniture was distributed throughout Europe. At the same time, he continued his research into textile art, which began in the 1930s.
From the early 1960s onwards, Mathieu Matégot is gradually turning away from furniture to devote himself entirely to the contemporary tapestry. His abstract compositions, based on geometric shapes, coloured rhythms and a controlled organisation of the surface, are part of the revival of French tapestry in the second half of the 20th century. Numerous textile works have been produced for public buildings, institutions and private collections.
The work of Matégot is characterised by a wide variety of mediums including metal, rattan, formica and glass, wool and by a consistency in formal experimentation. His transition from industrial design to textile art testifies to his ability to think about space, object and material in terms of the same expressive demands. He died in 2001 in Angers, he left a body of work in which modernist furniture meets an abundance of textiles, now widely recognised.
