22 MARCH 1963, Page 8

Marie Bonheur

The Taurus Group is a serious but little-sung company of French, Hungarian, American, Canadian, and native artists' who have banded together for four years past at the Chiltern Gal- lery, an agreeable dive near Baker Street Station. Last August they exhibited together in a four- teenth-century château in the Provencal uplands owned by a lively member, Marie Bonheur, an artist and friend of artists. This week Maclaine Bonheur has returned to No. 10 Chiltern Street with her latest show of tapestries. More pre- cisely, they are broderies appliquees—ricb' flowered stuffs cut out and decoratively ern- broidered, with bits of coloured glass, on silken hangings. Thus she creates a world of blossoming trees and plants, inhabited by bizarre little creatures that seem to spring naturally from the medievalism of her Château de Blauvac. The incursion is as ingratiating as her name. Maclaine Bonheur's art is extremely feminine, elegant, and variable also in its magic. The best of her tapestries trap the luminosity of Provence, the ribbony, floriate mode of her working informal by a very individual wit. At the private view found myself awaiting the moment when their smiling, delicately aquiline creator, with iosee- tile spectacles and furry head-dress, might presently take wing.

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