The earliest tapestries, from the late-40s through late-50s, incorporate heavily outlined compositions that include animals, biblical and mythical subjects assembled to form a narrative. In one example depicting a pack of horses, Stampede, the boldness of line and rigid blocks of color contribute to the movement of the horses charging forward. Additionally, certain stylistic motifs, such as the horses’ manes recur in Yoors’s abstract work. For instance, a very similar design marks the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The earlier figurative works also include groups of gypsy women dancing or sitting. These figures wear simple but colorful figure-revealing garments, and appear nude in other designs. In Girls and a Samovar (1957), three women in red and orange gather around a gold samovar and teapot. In this design, as in others of the genre, thick black lines form the girls’ bodies, not unlike how they appear in Yoors’s paintings and charcoal drawings.
In 1948 Yoors produced a series of smaller tapestries based on his series of gouaches including scenes from the Bible and Greek mythology. In these works, the figures are tightly cropped filling in the entire frame, influenced by the 17c Japanese artist Hokusai and tight close ups being used in film and photography .
