Marie Cuttoli

Cuttoli's original interests were in reviving carpet production in Algeria. Around 1910, she set up a workshop in her Algerian home to teach the trade to local women; their works were then sold to haute couture houses in Paris.^[1] In 1925, her works were displayed and well received at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts.^[3] In the same year, she opened Maison Myrbor (an abbreviation of her maiden name), a gallery and design house in Paris on Rue Vignon designed by Jean Lurçat. The street included established art dealers, such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.^[4] Maison Myrbor produced embroidered and appliqué dresses, some designed by Natalia Goncharova,^[5][6] offered a decoration department, and held major painting exhibitions for artists such as Salvador Dalí and Francis Cyril Rose.^[7]

The Barnes Foundation exhibited her work in 2020, and published a catalog of this work,^[8] citing the exhibition as the first celebration of "her visionary approach to art and business" by a major American institution.^[9]

Cuttoli commissioned tapestry cartoons from Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso in 1927.^[3] The following year, she turned her attention to reviving the Aubusson tapestry industry.^[1] She encouraged additional avant-garde artists of the time to weave tapestries based upon their easel paintings.^[10] These included Raoul Dufy, Le Corbusier, Lurçat, Henri Matisse, and Rouault. ^[11] Cuttoli went on to partner with Galerie Jeanne Bucher, and later with Galerie Lucie Weill & Seligmann.^[1]

In 1912,^[12] she married Paul Cuttoli, an Algerian-born French politician, a Radical Socialist senator.^[13] The Cuttolis built a mansion in Philippeville, Algeria named Villa Myriam.^[4]: 15 Her Parisian home at 55 Rue de Babylone went on to become the home of Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé.^[13] A close friend of Picasso and other contemporary artists, the Cuttolis collected works by Picasso, as well Braque, Alexander Calder, Dufy, and Léger.^[2] Her collection of Cubist works was donated to the Musée National d'Art Moderne,^[11] the 1969 Cuttoli-Laugier donation to the same museum included a collection of Picassos.^[3]