Adopted Toulon resident, artist Andréa Kertes has died

Andréa Kertes, a much-loved textile artist on the Toulon scene, passed away this Thursday. Aged around sixty, she had been battling cancer for two years.

Toulon, La Garde, Six-Fours... Exhibited in many towns in the Var region, Andréa Kertes offered the public the chance to discover a little-known art: high-warp tapestry, in which the threads are stretched vertically on the loom. Visitors were even invited to touch her works, as her art is not only for the eyes but also for the hands.

In search of freedom, she left her native Hungary at a very young age and moved to Paris in the 1980s to study the art of tapestry at the Gobelins school.

Like a modern-day Penelope, the artist used miles of thread and could spend long months working on her works.

Installed in Mourillon

"An inner force drives me to weave tirelessly. Yet, it is an art so little known, so little understood, so long and slow to execute. My way of weaving is completely improvised but based on an acquired technique. I sometimes create large sizes or kakemono format, narrow pieces that dance in the wind when they are displayed in nature. On the small formats, I write my little urban poetry, associations of imaginary words, a writing woven with fonts and colors appropriate to my purpose " she said on the occasion of her last exhibition "I weave as I breathe", in La Seyne.

For about twenty years, she had lived in a small apartment in Mourillon, which also served as her weaving studio. An artist from head to toe and rooted in her adopted homeland, she was also a live model for students at the Toulon School of Fine Arts.