TEXTILE GARDEN
Machiko Agano, untitled, 2007, Fondation Toms Pauli Lausanne. Image courtesy of Machiko Agano.
A new exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Textile Garden, promises to transport visitors into an atmospheric staging of Fibre Art. The works exhibited will conjure up associations with meteorological phenomena, let plants and flowers run rampant, and present powerful visualisations of mortality. Prized pieces from two of the world’s most important collections of Fibre Art, the Foundation Toms Pauli in Lausanne and the Decorative Arts Collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, will celebrate a rediscovered art form.
Ritzi und Peter Jacobi, Fragments III, 1981, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Decorative Arts Collection. Image courtesy of U. Romito & I. Šuta, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich/ZHdK.
Rope, yarn, and thread are the raw materials of those textile artists from all over the world who since the 1960s have radically broadened the scope of art. Their textile works have broken free of the wall and of the centuries-old convention of the hanging tapestry. Their woven or knotted reliefs and installations take possession of whichever interior they occupy, blurring the boundaries between sculpture and space—often on a monumental scale. Whether made of sisal, wool, or corn leaves, these impressive works seek a creative dialogue between material and method. They re-interpret established techniques and translate the textile traditions of the indigenous peoples of America into the present.
The roots of fibre art can be traced back to several cross-pollinating developments in art, design, and society. One factor was the advent of nonfigurative works and an exceptionally expressive brand of abstraction took as a new visual idiom in the years after World War II, particularly in North America. Also important was the burgeoning women’s liberation movement, which found textile art to be a powerful and distinctive mode of expression and enshrined what had hitherto been domestic craft techniques in the realm of art.
Elsi Giauque, Mais, ca. 1945, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Decorative Arts Collection. Image courtesy of U. Romito & I. Šuta, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich/ZHdK.
It is indeed women, for the most part, who have enabled aesthetic and conceptual considerations to supplant the otherwise purely practical purposes of textile objects, and who in their creations engage with cultural questions such as gender, politics, and socially defined gender roles and identities.
Academies of Eastern Europe tend to teach both decorative and fine arts, making overlaps between the two disciplines inevitable. And because many historical tapestries and textiles were destroyed in the war, artists here were forced to invent their own designs. Fine yarns being in short supply, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jagoda Buić and others like them resorted to sisal or hemp, which they untwisted and dyed with natural pigments. In Switzerland, textile artists such as Elsi Giauque, Pierrette Bloch, and Françoise Grossen were quick to embrace the new art form, their materials of choice being corn leaves, horsehair, and sisal. Lissy Funk, meanwhile, set her sights on the age-old technique of embroidery, which she took into completely new terrain.
Subsequent generations—Marie Schumann and Cécile Feilchenfeldt, for example—have looked to these pioneers as a source of inspiration for their own intriguing inventions. Textile Garden features works by all these artists alongside a further thirty-five positions. The Centre International de la Tapisserie Ancienne et Moderne (CITAM) was founded by Alice and Pierre Pauli together with Jean Lurçat in 1961. Its objective was to record, document, and above all display the vitality and creativity of contemporary textile art. Starting in 1962 the Musée des Beaux- Arts in Lausanne organised a series of competition-based international textile art biennials, which set out to showcase the cutting edge of contemporary textile art. Many of the works shown in Textile Garden were originally conceived for one of the Lausanne biennials.
Textile Garden is on now at theMuseum für Gestaltung Zürich until 30 October 2022. Find out more here: museum-gestaltung.ch
A new exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Textile Garden, promises to transport visitors into an atmospheric staging of Fibre Art. The works exhibited will conjure up associations with meteorological phenomena, let plants and flowers run rampant, and present powerful visualisations of mortality. Prized pieces from two of the world’s most important collections of Fibre Art, the Foundation Toms Pauli in Lausanne and the Decorative Arts Collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, will celebrate a rediscovered art form.
Ritzi und Peter Jacobi, Fragments III, 1981, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Decorative Arts Collection. Image courtesy of U. Romito & I. Šuta, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich/ZHdK.
Rope, yarn, and thread are the raw materials of those textile artists from all over the world who since the 1960s have radically broadened the scope of art. Their textile works have broken free of the wall and of the centuries-old convention of the hanging tapestry. Their woven or knotted reliefs and installations take possession of whichever interior they occupy, blurring the boundaries between sculpture and space—often on a monumental scale. Whether made of sisal, wool, or corn leaves, these impressive works seek a creative dialogue between material and method. They re-interpret established techniques and translate the textile traditions of the indigenous peoples of America into the present.
The roots of fibre art can be traced back to several cross-pollinating developments in art, design, and society. One factor was the advent of nonfigurative works and an exceptionally expressive brand of abstraction took as a new visual idiom in the years after World War II, particularly in North America. Also important was the burgeoning women’s liberation movement, which found textile art to be a powerful and distinctive mode of expression and enshrined what had hitherto been domestic craft techniques in the realm of art.
Elsi Giauque, Mais, ca. 1945, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Decorative Arts Collection. Image courtesy of U. Romito & I. Šuta, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich/ZHdK.
It is indeed women, for the most part, who have enabled aesthetic and conceptual considerations to supplant the otherwise purely practical purposes of textile objects, and who in their creations engage with cultural questions such as gender, politics, and socially defined gender roles and identities.
Academies of Eastern Europe tend to teach both decorative and fine arts, making overlaps between the two disciplines inevitable. And because many historical tapestries and textiles were destroyed in the war, artists here were forced to invent their own designs. Fine yarns being in short supply, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jagoda Buić and others like them resorted to sisal or hemp, which they untwisted and dyed with natural pigments. In Switzerland, textile artists such as Elsi Giauque, Pierrette Bloch, and Françoise Grossen were quick to embrace the new art form, their materials of choice being corn leaves, horsehair, and sisal. Lissy Funk, meanwhile, set her sights on the age-old technique of embroidery, which she took into completely new terrain.
Subsequent generations—Marie Schumann and Cécile Feilchenfeldt, for example—have looked to these pioneers as a source of inspiration for their own intriguing inventions. Textile Garden features works by all these artists alongside a further thirty-five positions. The Centre International de la Tapisserie Ancienne et Moderne (CITAM) was founded by Alice and Pierre Pauli together with Jean Lurçat in 1961. Its objective was to record, document, and above all display the vitality and creativity of contemporary textile art. Starting in 1962 the Musée des Beaux- Arts in Lausanne organised a series of competition-based international textile art biennials, which set out to showcase the cutting edge of contemporary textile art. Many of the works shown in Textile Garden were originally conceived for one of the Lausanne biennials.
Textile Garden is on now at theMuseum für Gestaltung Zürich until 30 October 2022. Find out more here: museum-gestaltung.ch
1 comment
I’m a Fiber Artist Working in Seoul, Korea.