DOM ROBERT, born Guy de CHAUNAC LANZAC
b. Nieuil-l'Espoir (Vienne), Decembre 15th, 1907
d. Dourgne (Tarn), May 10th, 1997

Dom Robert – Guy de Chaunac-Lanzac – born in 1907 in Nieuil-l'Espoir, is one of the most prestigious tapestry-makers of the twentieth century. His artistic and religious vocations flourished in the Benedictine Abbey of En Calcat, located in Dourgne, a village in the Tarn departement, where Dom Robert took orders in 1930.
Back from the war in 1940, he experienced an epiphany on seeing a farmyard which revealed to him his future pictorial universe. In 1941, an encounter with Jean Lurçat, who was impressed by his early creations, illuminated manuscript decorations and watercolours, proved crucial in determining his future as a cartoonpainter. The tapestries Dom Robert designed were woven at the Aubusson factories, first in the Tabard workshop and then in the one of Suzanne Goubely.

Between 1947 and 1958 he continued his work at Buckfast Abbey in England and grew increasingly successful, his work becoming betterknown thanks to important Parisian art galleries such as La Demeure.

On his return to En Calcat Abbey in 1958, he found a fruitful source of inspiration in the local environs – the plants and animals of the surrounding countryside – which led to an intensive rhythm of tapestry creation lastinguntil 1994, when a bad fall prevented him from pursuing any of his artistic activities. Dom Robert died at the Abbey of En Calcat in 1997, surrounded by his brother monks.

Dom Robert's woven œuvre consists of nearly one hundred and fifty original cartoons, most of which exist in several versions, scattered throughout the world in public and private collections. A considerable number of the artist's sketchbooks, mostly nature studies, form an independent set of drawings of great import, both as a source of inspiration and as a series of designs used in his tapestries.