Tapestries often draw from literary or mythological subjects, yet the art of weaving was often employed to narrate political events such as the story of famous battles or to celebrate a key victory. Emperors and kings at times commissioned sets of tapestries, for example, to depict and register historical events.
Nowadays contemporary weavers are maybe more focused on creating tapestries characterised by abstract motifs that could be used for interior design purposes or could be elevated to art, but there have been in the history of this practice artists who attempted to use tapestries in a strongly political way. Enter Hannah Ryggen.
Born in Malmö in 1894, Hanna Jönsson studied painting and drawing between 1916 and 1922 under the painter Fredrik Krebs in Lund. After a study trip to Dresden and inspired by the work of Goya, El Greco, and Vermeer, she decided to abandon painting and teach herself how to weave. Around this time she met the Norwegian artist Hans Ryggen, whom she married.
In 1924 the couple moved to a small farmhouse in Ørland, Norway, where Hannah was able to control the entire artistic process, using wool from local sheep, colouring her yarns with dye made from the plants she collected, and making her pieces on a standing loom built by her husband.
Rather than weaving classic rural scenes or opting for traditional mythological subjects, Ryggen focused on contemporary society: she followed closely the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the German occupation of Norway, paying close attention to the rise of fascism in Europe.
Her works soon turned into acts of resistance: her 1935 tapestry "Etiopia" (Ethiopia) was triggered by Benito Mussolini's ferocious invasion of the African country in October 1935 and was shown at the Paris World's Fair in 1937 next to Picasso's "Guernica" and in 1939 at the New York World's Fair.
Picasso's painting was commissioned by Spain's Republican government, but Ryggen's tapestry was made by the artist as a reaction to Mussolini's aggressive campaign and became one of the first works made by Ryggen that proved her social and political engagement.
More pieces followed: "Hitlerteppet" (The Hitler Tapestry, 1936) analysed the cruelties of the Nazi regime and the Church's entanglement in National Socialism and depicted two decapitated figures kneeling before a hovering cross. Ryggen also dedicated a tapestry to the executed German communist dissident Liselotte Herrmann, while her work "Drømmedød" (The Death of Dreams, 1936) looked at the Nazis' imprisonment of the German journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky, while criticizing Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, who supported Ossietszky's condemnation.
Rather than using mythological figures or allegories, Ryggen featured therefore in her socially conscious tapestries real historical figures, tackling the themes of violence and oppression and expressing opposition and criticism (Ryggen was critical of her home country, Sweden, that claimed to be neutral during the Second World War but allowed German soldiers to use its railway to get to Norway).
By the end of World War II, Ryggen looked at themes such as love, nature, portraiture, and social conformism, expressing her protest at the American involvement in Vietnam via her work "Blood in the Grass" (1966).
In the 1950s there was a comprehensive travelling exhibition of her work in the United States; Ryggen had a large solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1962 and she was the first female Norwegian artist to be represented at the Venice Biennale in 1964. Hannah Ryggen died six years later, in 1970.
This week the Moderna Museet in Malmö will launch the exhibition "Hannah Ryggen: Weaving the World". Curated by Julia Björnberg and produced in collaboration with Norway's National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, the event will feature sixteen monumental pictorial tapestries from 1926-1958 that explore violence and oppression, but also look at existential questions, love and poetry.
Among the pieces on display there will be the seven-metre long "Trollveggen" (Troll Wall, a cliff in the Troll Peaks Range; 1966) tapestry that usually hangs in the University of Oslo, and "We Live Upon a Star" (1958).
The latter was originally commissioned to Ryggen for the government building in Norway as a piece to remind the country's leaders of the importance of love and compassion for our fellow man. The work - featuring a naked man and woman embracing each other over a globe and two naked infants representing innocence and life suspended over the globe - was badly damaged in the attack carried out by a far-right terrorist on the government quarter in Oslo in July 2011, followed by the terrorist's rampage at the summer camp on Utøya Island.
The piece has been restored, but has a visible scar that now assumes even more meaning and power, reminding people of Ryggen's humanism, powerful criticism and struggle against fascism.
Finnish composer Mika Vainio, former member of ultra-minimalist electronica duo Pan Sonic, was also commissioned to create a pece inspired by the "Trollklangveggen" tapestry that will be performed on the opening night at the Inkonst art centre (Bergsgatan 29).
Though Ryggen was the first Norwegian textile artist to be accepted as a pictorial artist, she is not well known even in Norway and remains an outsider. Yet the powerful storytelling tapestries she created still speak to new and younger generations, reminding us that weaving can be used to make ambitious and powerful statements, connect with and contribute to modern history and politics, and build links between crafts and pictorial arts. As Ryggen herself indeed stated: "I am a painter, not a weaver; a painter whose tool is not the brush, but the loom".
"Hannah Ryggen: Weaving the World", Moderna Museet Malmö, October 31, 2015 - March 6, 2016.
Image credits for this post
Hans and Hannah Ryggen.
Hannah Ryggen
Self-Portrait, 1914
© Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum © Hannah Ryggen, Bildupphovsrätt 2015
Hannah Ryggen
Ethiopia, 1936
Hannah Ryggen
"Drømmedød" (The Death of Dreams, 1936)
Hannah Ryggen
Liselotte Hermann, 1938
© Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum © Hannah Ryggen, Bildupphovsrätt 2015
Hannah Ryggen
Fear, 1936
© Nasjonalmuseet Oslo © Hannah Ryggen, Bildupphovsrätt 2015
Hannah Ryggen
Vi lever på en stjerne (We Live Upon a Star, 1958), Photo: Steffen Wesselvold Holden
© Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum © Hannah Ryggen, Bildupphovsrätt 2015
Hannah Ryggen
Schweden, 1946
© Hannah Ryggen, Bildupphovsrätt 2015
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