Tag: Luba Krejci

Art Out and About: Exhibitions Here and Abroad

September 7, 2022 0 Comment

It’s September and it’s not just schools that are opening their doors. Tanned, rested and ready — museums and galleries like browngrotta arts are presenting fall events. Here’s a round up of some fiber events to view in the next few months.

NYTM
New York Textile Month
New York City and nearby locations
https://www.textilemonth.nyc

In New York, it’s NYTM — New York Textile Month.  That means range of activities — talks, films, studio visits, workshops, an in-window exhibition at Bergdorf Goodman, exhibitions at Mana Contemporary and elsewhere, and Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion at the Guggenheim — all celebrating textile art, making and conservation. Check out the NYTM website for suggestions, times, and dates.

Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6: Kyoko Kumai
Through November 6, 2022
Nakahechi Museum of Art
891 Kinro Nakahechi-machi
Tanabe-shi Wakayama-ken Japan
Tel; 0739-65-0390 
https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/en/events/-/2022%2Fcontemporary-weaving-artist-series-vi-kyoko-kumai

Detail of Memory, Kyoko Kumai, stainless steel filaments, 41” x 19” x 19”, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Since 2017, Tanabe City Museum of Art has been presenting Contemporary Weaving, an exhibition series that showcases outstanding contemporary weavers who create world-class works by combining traditional and unique materials and techniques with new weaving expressions that reflect the times. This year’s Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6 features the art of Kyoko Kumai (1943), who has expanded the world of weaving through her innovative use of metallic threads, and continues to develop a variety of expressions that evoke light and wind.

Intellectual Beauty
2nd International Exhibition of Textile Art and Mixed Media
Museu Textil 
September 1 – February 28, 2022
Virtual
https://www.museutextil.com

Vessel from Intellectual Beauty by Jeannet Leenderste. Photo by Jeannet Leenderste

Rodrigo Franzao founded a fully envisioned virtual museum that focuses on the work of artists who “use textile strategies as support for their creations.” For Intellectual Beauty, Fanzao has gathered 43 artists from 18 countries, who have used their “sensitive reality to introduce to the beholder the sensorial perceptions of a reality emancipated from rules and theory, free and absorbed by inspiration.” You can view the entire exhibition, 116 artworks, including two by Jeannet Leenderste, online.

Contextile 2022
September 3 – October 31, 2022
Guimarães, Portugal

Home Page 2022
Landscape Here West, by Åse Ljones from the Intellectual Beauty exhibition. Photo by Helge Hansen.
Anthropocene by Neha Puri Dhir from Contextile 2022. Photo by Neha Puri Dhir.

Contextile 2022 – Contemporary Textile Art Biennial celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year. The exhibition features 57 works by 50 artists from 34 countries chosen for their high creativity, originality and technical competence around the textile element, by construction, theme, concept or material used, as well as their adherence to the concept of Contextile 2022: RE-MAKE.  Among the artists included are Neha Puri Dhir of India. In addition, the Contextile organizers selected Norway as its invited country and are presenting work from 13 Norwegian textile artists including Åse Ljones.

X International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, “25 Years World Textile Art”
From November 3rd to December 15th, 2022
Miami International Fine Art (MIFA)
5900 NW 74th Ave
Miami, FL 33166
Colombia Consulate
280 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134

https://wta-online.org/blog/x-biennial-of-contemporary-textile-art-wta-25-years/

This year 2022, WTA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the X International Biennial “25 YEARS WTA”, from October through December 2022. For the 10 th Biennial, more than ten countries will be interconnected to celebrate WTA history through salons featuring 25 artists each. A number of artists will have worked displayed in connection with this exhibition including Anneke Klein.

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
October 8-16, 2022
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php

Detail of River by Jolanta Owidzka, 1978 and Ultima Copper, Green, Orange vessels by Gertrud Hals, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Mindful of the impact that poitical events can have on artists and their art, browngrotta arts will present to work of nearly 50 artists from 21 NATO-related countries in Europe whose work reflects diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8 – 16, 2022) will include art created under occupation, in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, art by those who left Hungary, Spain and Romania while occupied, and who left Russia in later years, including Jolanta Owidzka, Zofia Butrymowicz, and Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet of Poland and Luba Krejci and Jan Hladik of Czechoslovakia, Ceca Georgieva of Bulgaria, Gyöngy Laky (Hungary/US), Ritzi Jacobi (Romania/Germany), Adela Akers (Spain/US), Aleksandra Stoyanov (Ukraine/Israel) and Irina Kolineskova (Russia/Germany). Allies for Art will also include recently created art by artists living in Europe, including works by Gudrun Pagter of Denmark, Åse Ljones of Norway, Ulla-Maija Vikman of Finland, Heidrun Schimmel of Germany, Lilla Kulka and Włodmierz Cygan of Poland, and, five artists new to browngrotta arts, including, Esmé Hofman of the Netherlands, Aby Mackie of Spain and Baiba Osite of Latvia.

Reserve your space on Eventbrite.

In Praise of Older Women Artists

July 11, 2018 0 Comment

Simone Pheulpin at The Design Museum of London. Photo: Maison Parisienne

Last year, Artsy took a look at why old women had replaced young men as the “new darlings” of the art word. Its twofold explanation: as institutions attempt to revise the art-historical canon, passionate dealers and curators have seen years of promotion come to fruition and these artists have gained attention as blue-chip galleries search for new artists to represent among those initially overlooked.

Artsy points at Carmen Herrara, Carol Rama, Irma Blank, and Geta Brătescu and others to make its point. Mary Sabbatino, vice president at Galerie Lelong, is quoted as saying,  “They’re fully formed artists, they’re mature artists, they’re serious artists. They’re not going to burn out as sometimes happens with younger artists…and normally the prices are far below the other artists of their generation, so you’re offering a value to someone.” Barbara Haskell, a curator at the Whitney Museum in New York, says museums everywhere are realizing that “there’s been a lopsided focus on the white male experience” in art history, and are working to correct that.”

Primitive Figures Bird and Insects, Luba Krejci,
knotted linen, 40.5″ x 44.5″ x 2″, circa 1970s. Photo: Tom Grotta

Among the women artists working in fiber who belong on a list of those achieving belated recognition include Ruth Asawa, Sheila Hicks (mentioned in the Artsy article) Kay Sekimachi, Lenore Tawney, Ethel Stein, Simone Pheulpin, Sonia Delauney, Luba Krejci, Ritzi Jacobi and Helena Hernmarck. The international contemporary fiber movement was initiated by women who took reinvented tapestry, took it off the wall and drew global attention to an art form that had been synonymous with tradition to that point. Luba Krecji adapted needle and bobbin lace techniques to create, “nitak,” her own technique, which enabled her to “draw” with thread. In her use of line as “sculptural form,” Ruth Asawa,” provided a crucial link between the mobile modernism of Alexander Calder and the gossamer Minimalism of Fred Sandback, whose yarn pieces similarly render distinctions between interior and exterior moot,” wrote Andrea K. Scott last year in The New Yorker.

 

Damask 5, Ethel Stein, 1980-89. Photo by Tom Grotta

These artists continue their explorations though their seventies, eighties and nineties. An example, Kay Sekimachi, who created complex, elegant monofilament weavings in the 70s and 80s, bowls and towers of paper after that, and continues, at age 90, to create elegant weavings of lines and grids that are reminiscent of the paintings of Agnes Martin. After having received the Special Mention Loewe Craft Prize and exhibited at the  Design Museum of London, this year, Simone Pheulpin continues to create innovative work in her 70s, work that is part of the 10th contemporary art season at Domaine de Chaumont sur Loire and part of the exhibition “Tissage Tressage” at the Fondation Villa Datris.

browngrotta arts Returns to SOFA Chicago, November 5-8th

October 26, 2015 0 Comment

627mr PapelionIidae, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette wool, steel, 54” x 54” x 16”, 2000

627mr PapelionIidae, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
wool, steel, 54” x 54” x 16”, 2000

After a few-year hiatus, browngrotta arts will return to the Sculpture, Objects, and Functional Art Exposition at the Navy Pier in Chicago next month. We’ll be reprising our most recent exhibition, Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now, with different works for a number of artists, including Naoko Serino, Kay Sekimachi, Anda Klancic, Ritzi Jacobi, Randy Walker, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, Carolina Yrarrázaval and Lenore Tawney. Other artists whose work will be featured in browngrotta arts’ exhibit are Magdalena Abakanowicz, Adela Akers, Lia Cook, Sheila Hicks, Masakazu Kobayashi, Naomi Kobayashi, Luba Krejci, Jolanta Owidzka, Ed Rossbach, Sherri Smith, Carole Fréve, Susie Gillespie, Stéphanie Jacques, Tim Johnson, Marianne Kemp, Federica Luzzi, Rachel Max, Eduardo Portillo & Mariá Eugenia Dávila, Michael Radyk and Gizella K Warburton. SOFA will publish a related essay, Fiber Art Pioneers: Pushing the Pliable Plane by Jo Ann C. Stabb,
on the origins of the contemporary fiber movement.

1cy AZUL Y NEGR Carolina Yrarrázaval rayon, cotton 116" x 40.5”, 2003

1cy AZUL Y NEGR
Carolina Yrarrázaval
rayon, cotton
116″ x 40.5”, 2003

Now in its 22nd year, SOFA CHICAGO is a must-attend art fair, attracting more than 36,000 collectors, museum groups, curators and art patrons to view museum-quality works of art from 70+ international galleries. After a nationwide competition, SOFA CHICAGO recently placed #7 in the USA Today Reader’s Choice 10 Best Art Events.New this year, SOFA CHICAGO will unveil a revamped floorplan created by Chicago architects Cheryl Noel and Ravi Ricker of Wrap Architecture. The re-envisioned design will create a more open and cohesive show layout, allowing visitors to explore the fair in a more engaging way. Changes include a new, centrally located main entrance where browngrotta arts’ booth, 921, will be located. Cheryl Noel of Wrap Architecture adds, “The most effective urban contexts contain distinct places within the larger space, corridors with visual interest and clear paths with fluid circulation. We believe this new floorplan will capture the spirit of the art and be an expression of the work itself, exploring form and materiality, with the same level of design rigor applied.”

1rw SAW PIECE NO.4 (AUTUMN) Randy Walker, salvaged bucksaw, steel rod, nylon thread 42" x 96" x 26", 2006, Photo by Tom Grotta

1rw SAW PIECE NO.4 (AUTUMN)
Randy Walker, salvaged bucksaw, steel rod, nylon thread
42″ x 96″ x 26″, 2006, Photo by Tom Grotta

On Friday, November 6th, from 12:30 to 2:30, Michael Radyk will be at browngrotta arts’ booth to discuss his Swan Point series, Jacquard textiles created to be cut and manipulated after being taken off the loom, in which Radyk was trying “to bring the artist’s hand back into the industrial Jacquard weaving process.” SOFA opens with a VIP preview on Thursday, November 5th, from 5 pm to 9 pm. The hours for Friday and Saturday are 11 am – 7 pm; and 12 to 6 pm on Sunday the 8th. SOFA is in the Festival Hall, Navy Pier, 600 East Grand Avenue Chicago, IL 60611. Hope to see you there!

Influence and Evolution: The Catalog is Now Available

May 20, 2015 0 Comment

Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture...then and now catalog cover artwork by Federica Luzzi

Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now
catalog cover artwork by Federica Luzzi

Our Spring exhibition Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now explored the impact of artists – Sheila Hicks, Ritzi Jacobi, Lenore Tawney, Ed Rossbach and others – who took textiles off the wall in the 60s and 70s to create three-dimensional fiber sculpture. In Influence and Evolution, we paired early works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lia Cook, Kay Sekimachi and Françoise Grossen — artists who rebelled against tapestry tradition — with works from a later generation of artists, all born in 1960 or after. Fiber sculpture continues to evolve through this second group of artists, including María Eugenia Dávila and Eduardo Portillo of Venezuela,

Influencers Title page Influence and Evolution catalog

Influencers Title page Influence and Evolution catalog

Stéphanie Jacques of Belgium, Naoko Serino of Japan and Anda Klancic of Slovenia. In our 160-page color exhibition catalog, Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now, you can see the works in the exhibition. Each artist is represented by at least two works; images of details are included so that readers can experience the works fully. The catalog also includes an insightful essay, Bundling Time and Avant-garde Threadwork by Ezra Shales, PhD, Associate Professor, History of Art Department, Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Influence and Evolution, Shales write in his essay, “poses rich comparisons and asks the mind to sustain historical linkages. We feel the uneven texture of time, luring us into a multiplicity of artistic pasts and an open road of varied fibrous futures. An emphasis on plural possibilities makes this exhibition quite distinct from a tidy biblical story of genesis or masters and apprentices. We witness multiple intra-generational passing of batons as well as many artists changing horses midstream, as well they often do.” The three works in Influence and Evolution by Adela Akers that traverse five decades provide a fascinating view of the artistic progression Shales refers to. The curvilinear, draped forms of Summer and Winter 

Influence and Evolution, Adela Akers spread

(1977; restored 2014), he notes, resemble “both a ruffle and a row of ancient mourners.” Midnight, from 1988, by contrast, is hard-edged, “a monumental window into an alternative architectural space.” And Akers recent work, Silver Waves, completed in 2014, is “an intimate surface with linear imagery” whose horsehair bristles “almost invite a caress if they did not seem to be a defensive adaptation.” Juxtapose Silver Waves with American Michael Radyk’s Swan Point (2013) and and Dutch artist, Marianne Kemp’s Red Fody (2013) that also features horsehair,  and catalog readers are likely to understand  Shales’ query: should we categorize woven forms as a logical temporal narrative or inevitable sequence of linked inquiries? Shales is a guest curator of Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and

Influence and Evolution, Sheila Hicks spread

Influence and Evolution, Sheila Hicks spread

Today currently at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York which features more than 100 works, by a core cadre of women—including Ruth Asawa, Sheila Hicks, Karen Karnes, Dorothy Liebes, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney, and Eva Zeisel—who had impact and influence as designers, artists and teachers, using materials in innovative ways. To order a copy of Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now, our 43rd catalog, visit browngrotta.com.

80.89

Influence and Evolution, Stéphanie Jacques spread

Art in the Mad Men Years — A Fond Farewell

May 17, 2015 0 Comment

mad-men-mid-season-finale-megan-draper-going-die-plane-crashWe’ll be sad to see the last of Don Draper and Peggy Olson tonight (is it just me, or does anyone else think that Peggy and Jimmy Olsen could be related, except for the spelling, of course?). The series is set in between 1960 and 1970 — remember Pete’s father dying on American Airlines Flight #1 in 1962; Kennedy’s assaination the day before Roger’s daughter’s wedding in 1963; Don getting tickets to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965 and this season’s premier with Don watching Nixon announcing troops in Cambodia in 1970?. The series’ sets and costumes are carefully designed, to highlight the clothing, furniture and design of the period. That’s a period that we are nostalgic about. Happily, we live with some classic furniture from those years, including a desk, server and beds by the late Edgar Anderson, a couple of Kennedy rockers, Bertoia side chairs, a Saarinen table, re-issued Uten.silo Wall-Alls and an Arredoluce Monza Triennial floor lamp. We also have the good fortune to promote important artworks from that period, which was a seminal one for contemporary textile art. Here, in honor of Don, Joan, Peggy and rest of the guys, a gallery of fiber art from the Mad Men years.

1962

52r WARP IKAT SPIRAL, Ed Rossbach, 3’ X 9’, 1962

52r WARP IKAT SPIRAL, Ed Rossbach, 3’ X 9’, 1962, photo by Tom Grotta

1964

1ma/r Studium Faktur, Magdalena Abakanowicz sisal 54" x 43" x 9", 1964

1ma/r Studium Faktur, Magdalena Abakanowicz
sisal
54″ x 43″ x 9″, 1964, photo by Tom Grotta

1965-66

21t PATH II, Lenore Tawney, linen 74" x 30", ca. 1965-66, photo by tom grotta

21t PATH II, Lenore Tawney, linen
74″ x 30″, ca. 1965-66, photo by Tom Grotta

1966

146mr Eclate de Braise, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 33" x 24", 1966, photo by Tom Grotta

146mr Eclate de Braise, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 33″ x 24″, 1966, photo by Tom Grotta

1967

1jo/r WARSZAWA Jolanta Owidzka wool, linen and metallic thread 90" x 68",1967, photo by Tom Grotta

1jo/r WARSZAWA
Jolanta Owidzka
wool, linen and metallic thread
90″ x 68″,1967, photo by Tom Grotta

1968

2ws Untitled, Wojciech Sadley , mixed media, 32” x 24”, 1968, photo by Tom Grotta

2ws Untitled, Wojciech Sadley , mixed media, 32” x 24”, 1968, photo by Tom Grotta

1969

Talking Trudeau-Nixon by Helena Hernmarck shown at the Lausanne Biennial in 1969, 51" x 153", photo by Helena Hernmarck

Talking Trudeau-Nixon by Helena Hernmarck
shown at the Lausanne Biennial in 1969, 51″ x 153″, photo by Helena Hernmarck

1970’s

2lk Primitive Figures Bird and insects, Luba Krejci, knotted linen, 40.5" x 44.5" x 2", circa 1970s, photo by Tom grotta

2lk Primitive Figures Bird and insects, Luba Krejci, knotted linen, 40.5″ x 44.5″ x 2″, circa 1970s, photo by Tom Grotta

(For still more on mid-century design, there’s Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today currently at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, which considers the important contributions of women to modernism in postwar visual culture. In the 1950s and 60s, when painting, sculpture, and architecture were dominated by men, and women had considerable impact in alternative materials such as textiles, ceramics, and metals.)

Influence and Evolution Update: The Influencers – Eastern Europe

April 15, 2015 0 Comment

Detail of Maria Laskiewicz, MASK, woo1, sisal ,wood sculpture, 72" x 53", 1968, photo by tom Grotta

Detail of Maria Laskiewicz, MASK, woo1, sisal ,wood sculpture, 72″ x 53″, 1968, photo by tom Grotta

A group of six influential artists from Eastern Europe, Maria Łaszkiewicz, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Luba Krejci, Ritzi Jacobi, Zofia Butrymowicz and Jolanta Owidzka will be among the 32 artists featured in Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture…then and now, at browngrotta arts in Wilton Connecticut. The oldest is Maria Łaszkiewicz of Poland, born in 1892 (died 1981). She encouraged a generation of textile artists, including

Magdalena Abakanowicz

5ma Montana del Fuego, Magdalena Abakanowicz, sisal
54” x 81”, 1986, photo by Tom Grotta

Magdalena Abakanowicz (born 1930). In the catalog essay for Influence and Evolution, Ezra Shales, PhD notes that even thought she was born in the 19th century, “…Laszkiewicz was probably less weighted down by the material traditions of fiber than we would expect – and more modern for her time than she might seem to us today. She speaks global folk idioms and traditions with ease.” Magdalena Abakanowicz, who worked in Laszkiewicz’s studio, is the most well-known artist of this group, as much for her monumental figures in bronze as for the enormous weavings she created in 1960s. In creating her rebellious Abakans works, “I did not want to relate to either tapestry or sculpture,” Abakanowicz has written. “Ultimately it is the total obliteration of the utilitarian function of tapestry that fascinates me.” Luba Krejci (1925-2005) of Czechoslovakia also forged a new direction, creating figures of thread by adapting needle and bobbin lace-making techniques to create “intake,” a technique of her own making. The figures in her work are not what one would encounter in American work according to critic Janet Koplos. They are, Koplos wrote in the New Examiner in 1970, “not organic, not playful, not color studies, not romantic. They share with Eastern European fiber art a somber mood, a predominance of dark colors, a look back to classic themes and

7rj Breeze, Ritzi Jacobi coconut fiber, sisal, cotton, 49” x 49” x 8”, 2000, photo by Tom Grotta

7rj Breeze, Ritzi Jacobi
coconut fiber, sisal, cotton, 49” x 49” x 8”, 2000, photo by Tom Grotta

characters, and a great drama.” The youngest of this renown group, Ritzi Jacobi (born 1941), originally of Romania participated in 11 of the prestigious Lausanne Biennials and is represented in Influence and Evolution by a newer work, created in 2000. The exhibition will also include works from the 1960s by Polish artists Zofia Butrymowicz (1904 -1987) and Jolanta Owidzka (born 1927), a colleague of Abakanowicz in Warsaw. Influence and Evolution also features 15 artists, born after 1960, who approach materials, form and technique with a sense of exploration similar to that which characterized the 60s and 70s. The exhibition opens at 3pm on April 24th. The Artists Reception and Opening is on Saturday April 25th, 1pm to 6pm. The hours for Sunday April 27th through May 3rd are 10am to 5pm. To make an appointment earlier or later, call: 203-834-0623.

4jo. Jolanta Owidska MARGARET VIII, flax, sisal and wool, 57" x 39", 1977, photo by Tom Grotta

4jo. Jolanta Owidska MARGARET VIII, flax, sisal and wool, 57″ x 39″, 1977, photo by Tom Grotta

25 at 25 at SOFA NY Countdown: Luba Krejci

April 2, 2012 0 Comment

Luba Krejci Thread Drawing, photo by Tom Grotta

At SOFA NY 2012, browngrotta arts will present two thread drawings from the 1970s by Czechoslovokian artist Luba Krejci (1925-2005).

Krejci was an extremely diversified artist who made lace, embroidered and printed textiles, created tapestries, straw figures, wickerwork and children’s clothing. She made handbags and hats and exhibited extensively in Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, Russia, Argentina and New Zealand.

THREAD DRAWING, Luba Krejci, 18.5″ x 18, photo by Tom Grotta

Her most significant contribution to field of textile history, however, was her adaptation of the traditional needle and bobbin lace, to create a technique that she called nitak or “little threaded one,” which enabled her to draw with thread,  She generally created her pieces in black linen thread but white, red and light brown examples also exist. At SOFA, browngrotta arts will have examples of works in black and brown.

Krejci’s work is in numerous public collections, including those ofThe Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Czechoslovakia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, theNetherlands; Museum Bellerive, Lausanne, Switzerland; Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Museum of Applied Arts, Brno, Czechoslovakia and the Czech
Ministry of Culture, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Dispatches: Chicago’s Art institute, Contemporary Fiber Art from the Permanent Collection

November 17, 2010 0 Comment

Carter Taking Pictures on the entrance ramp that leads to the art institute

We made a hurried trip to the Art Institute on the

last day of SOFA to see Contemporary Fiber Art: A Selection from the Permanent Collection, the inaugural exhibition in the reopened Elizabeth F. Cheney and Agnes Allerton Textile Galleries, which were closed for five years during the construction of the Modern Wing. We walked there in the glorious morning sunshine, through a corner of Millennium Park, and entered the Institute from the bridge. Heading down to the textile galleries feels a bit like entering the basement, but once inside, the spaces are light and airy.

Posters for the two fiber exhibits photo by Carter Grotta

The holdings of the Department of Textiles at the Art Institute comprise more than 66,000 sample swatches and 14,000 textiles ranging from 300 BC to the present. Extensive holdings of ecclesiastical textiles, 16th- and 17th-century velvets, 18th-century silks, 18th-20th-century printed fabrics, and lace are included in the department’s impressive collection of European textiles. Other notable holdings include American quilts and woven coverlets, historical fashion accessories, dress and furnishing fabrics and Japanese and Chinese holdings.

Entering the Exhibition facing “Red Doors” by Robert D. Sailors photo by Carter Grotta

Helena Hernmarck’s Mu1 and and its maquette next to Si Rothko M’etait Conte by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette photo by Carter Grotta

The Collection also includes more than 400 textiles and fiber art works from the 20th Century. These are not freestanding fiber works, sculptures vessels or baskets, for the most part, but wall hangings and ceiling-hung pieces. Sixty-one of these pieces are currently on display. Nonetheless it is an impressive grouping. The usual suspects are here – Lenore Tawney, Sheila Hicks and Claire Zeisler, Peter Collingwood and the Poles, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Zofia Butrymowicz and Jolanta Owidzka. But there are some surprises. Red Doors, by Robert D. Sailors, which graces the entrance is a show stopper. The Cynthia Schira that is included is an excellent piece.  Helena (Barynina) Hernmarck’s 1965 abstract tapestry Mu1 is enhanced by the powerful painted maquette that is displayed alongside. The Mariette Rousseau-Vermette work, Si Rothko M’etait Conté (If Rothko Himself Had Told Me a Story)(which we assisted a client in donating) was luminous. We were delighted to see the tapestries  floating off the wall, as we recommend, giving added dimension to the works. One quibble, the works in the cases in the conference room, which include a piece by Scott Rothstein, need to be better lit. Maybe motion detection lights would work, which would minimize energy use and uv exposure but still enable the works to be seen when viewers enter the room.

The items selected work well together, as curator Christa C. Mayer Thurman, emerita of the Department of Textiles, intended. The exhibition’s stated aim — to explore how fiber art has developed as an art form from the middle of the 20th Century through today and illustrate how the flexibility and variability of the medium encouraged artists to explore the potential of different fibers and methods — has certainly been achieved.

View of exhibit centered around a work by Claire Zeisler photo by Carter Grotta

 

Sneak Peek: Catalog No. 37, Advocates for Art: Polish and Czech Fiber Artists from the Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection Catalog, Essay by Christa C. Mayer Thurman

October 31, 2010 0 Comment

catalog cover

Advocates for Art: Polish and Czech Fiber Artists from the Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection

The 37th catalog produced by browngrotta arts, Advocates for Art: Polish and Czech Fiber Artists from the Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection, will be available beginning November 10, 2010.

PALISADES (Detail), Anna Urbanowicz-Krowacka, wool and sisal, 55″ x 70″, 1992

Prominent art dealers Anne and Jacques Baruch first opened the Jacques Baruch Gallery in Chicago in 1967. The Baruch’s gallery focused on contemporary art and artists from Central and Eastern Europe, which Jacques once described as “the finest work of tomorrow…not what is known…the new blood.” Many of the works presented at the gallery were by artists who began their careers under Communist occupation. The gallery’s early years coincided with worsening political conditions behind the Iron Curtain. On August 20, 1968, the Baruchs left Prague just five hours before Soviet tanks rolled into the city and brutally ended a brief period of democratic reforms.

LUNE DE MIEL I (Detail), Magdalena Abakanowicz, sisal and linen, 55″x 78″ x 8″, 1986

Making trips behind the Iron Curtain during these years was a complex and, at times, dangerous, way of making a living. Despite these difficulties, the couple managed to find a significant entourage of artists to exhibit, among them a group of innovative textile artists, who had gathered acclaim at the Lausanne Biennials of International Tapestry and other European exhibitions, but who were not well known in the US. “We were captivated by their energy, experiments and bold compositions,” Anne would write of the Polish fiber artists she and Jacques met in 1970. “Though there were…shortages of studios, materials and most necessities for daily life, all their problems did not hamper their work. Rather, it stimulated their creativity, and their use of sisal, rope, metal, horsehair and fleece as well as the traditional wool, flax and silk, revealed new artistic thought with results which were dynamic, highly personal and original.”

LEATHER SKETCH (Detail), Jolanta Owidzka, high warp linen, sisal, leather 27″ x 45″ x 4″; 70 x 110cm, 1977

These artists included Magdalena Abakanowicz of Poland (whose tapestry Lune de Miel 2 is installed at Chicago’s McCormick Place and whose sculpture installation Agora,  a group of 106 iron cast figures, is in Chicago’s Grant Park), Jolanta Banaszkiewicz (Poland), Zofia Butrymowicz (Poland), Hanna Czajkowska (Poland), Jan Hladik (Czechoslovakia), Luba Krejci (Czechoslovakia), Lilla Kulka (Poland), Maria Laszkiewicz (Poland), Jolanta Owidzka (Poland), Agnieszka Ruszczynska-Szafranska (Poland), Wojciech Sadley (Poland), Anna Sledziewska (Poland), Anna Urbanowicz-Krowacka (Poland) and Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet (Poland). It is work by this group of historically significant artists that is featured in this catalog.

CO-BOG ZLACZYL (WHAT GOD HAS JOINED), Lilla Kulkaa wool, silk 55″ X 48″, 1987

Christa C. Mayer Thurman has written an introductory essay about Jacques and Anne Baruch for the catalog. Thurman, who was the Chair and Curator of the Department of Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1967 through 2009, has also written brief essays about several of the 14 artists whose works are featured in the catalog. Thurman is the author and co-author of numerous books about textiles, including, Raiment for the Lord’s Service (1975); Claire Zeisler: a Retrospective (1979); Lissy Funk: A Retrospective (1989); and Textiles: The Art Institute of Chicago (1992). For European Tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago (2008), Thurman was the general editor, contributed to the resulting volume as an author and oversaw the collection’s conservation. Thurman and her late husband, Lawrence S. Thurman were friends of the Baruchs for many years. During Thurman’s tenure at the Art Institute several textiles from behind the Iron Curtain entered the collection either as gifts, bequests or as purchases.

PODROZ (Journey) from the Kolodia series Agnieszka Ruszczynska-Szafranska linen, sisal, wool 60″ x 56″, 1986

The 76-page color catalog can be ordered from browngrotta arts beginning http://browngrotta.com/Pages/c35.php November 10, 2010.