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Article

Abakanowicz, Magdalena  

Zdisław Żygulski jr

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Felenty, nr Warsaw, 1930).

Polish textile artist. She studied at the College of Fine Arts, Sopot, and graduated in 1955 from the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw. At the beginning of her career she was interested in drawing, painting and sculpture, but after 1960 she concentrated on textile arts in the broad sense of the term. Breaking with tradition, she initiated bold experiments with fibre and fabric. Her work contributed to the revolutionary textile movement known as Fibre art and finally entered the domain of modern sculpture.

Abakanowicz’s début, with a composition of forms made of white fabrics, was in 1962 at the first Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie in Lausanne. At that time she also experimented with tapestry, giving it three-dimensional relief by introducing non-woven shapes. In the late 1960s her development of three-dimensional textiles was fully realized in her ‘abakans’. These took various forms—winged, open or round—and were red, orange or white. She also created fifteen heavy, monolithic ‘black forms’ and three large ‘black garments’. In ...

Article

Adam, Henri-Georges  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Paris, Jan 14, 1904; d La Clarté, Brittany, Aug 27, 1967).

French sculptor, printmaker and tapestry designer. His father was a jeweller, and after his return from World War I in 1918 Adam worked in his studio and learnt how to engrave. At the same time he studied drawing at the Ecole Germain-Pilon and read Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, which was to have a great influence on him. In 1925 he attended evening classes at a school of drawing in Montparnasse. From 1928 to 1934 he started to produce prints and became associated with André Breton, Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, although he was never greatly influenced by them. His early prints, reminiscent of the work of George Grosz, were mostly designed as social satire, mocking the myths surrounding patriotism, the family and religion, as in When Papa is Patriotic (1935). In 1933 he designed the costumes and scenery for Hans Schlumberg’s Miracle à Verdun performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. His first exhibition of prints was held in ...

Article

Adams, Mark  

Courtney Ann Shaw

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Fort Plain, NY, Oct 27, 1925; d San Francisco, 2006).

American tapestry artist, painter and stained-glass designer. Adams studied painting at Syracuse University and with Hans Hoffmann in New York, where he was influenced by the medieval tapestries in the Cloisters and also by the work of Matisse. In the 1950s Adams was apprenticed to the influential French tapestry designer Jean Lurçat, from whom he learnt the bold colours and clear imagery that characterize his work. He also studied at the Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif in Aubusson before beginning to use a series of workshops, notably that of Marguerite and Paul Avignon, who wove his first nationally acclaimed tapestry, Phoenix and the Golden Gate (1957). Flight of Angels (1962) was exhibited at the first Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie in Lausanne. In 1976 his cartoon of California Poppies (San Francisco, CA Pal. Legion of Honor) was woven for the Five Centuries of Tapestry exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, as a demonstration piece. Later tapestries, for example ...

Article

Admiral carpet  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Type of 15th-century Spanish carpet, possibly woven in the Mercian villages of Letur or Liétor. Like Alcaraz carpets, they are tied with the Spanish knot. The name derives from the fact that many carpets of this type bear arms of the Enríquez family, hereditary admirals of Castile; others embody the arms of Maria of Castile (queen of Alfonso V of Aragon)....

Article

Adnan, Etel  

Andrew Weiner

Publication History:

Published online:
02 July 2009
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Beirut, 1925).

Lebanese painter and writer active in the USA. Daughter of a Greek Christian mother and a Syrian Muslim father, Adnan was educated in Lebanon before going on to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley. For many years she taught aesthetics at Dominican College, San Rafael, CA; she also lectured and taught at many other colleges and universities. During the 1970s Adnan regularly contributed editorials, essays, and cultural criticism to the Beirut-based publications Al-Safa and L’Orient-Le Jour. In 1978 she published the novel Sitt Marie Rose, which won considerable acclaim for its critical portrayal of cultural and social politics during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War. Adnan published numerous books of poetry, originating in her opposition to the American war in Vietnam and proceeding to encompass topics as diverse as the landscape of Northern California and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Her poetry served as the basis for numerous works of theater and contemporary classical music....

Article

Adrian  

Ann Poulson

Publication History:

Published online:
14 May 2009
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(Gilbert) [Greenburg, Adrian Adolph]

(b Naugatuck, CT, March 3, 1903; d Los Angeles, CA, Sept 13, 1959).

American costume and fashion designer. Adrian is best known for his costume designs for Hollywood films and his signature women’s suits (see fig.). Adrian was educated at the School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design) in New York and Paris. He began his career in New York by designing costumes for Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue of 1921. It was through his work on Broadway that he met the costume designer Natacha Rambova, wife of the screen idol Rudolph Valentino, and began designing costumes for films. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1924 and by 1926 was working for the director Cecil B. DeMille, who brought him to Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) in 1928. When his contract with DeMille ended, Adrian signed with MGM, where he would remain as head costume designer until 1942. At MGM, Adrian dressed stars such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer and Jeanette McDonald. Although it was his designs for Garbo, in which he was careful not to distract from her natural beauty, that first brought him fame, it was his creations for Joan Crawford that made him a household name....

Article

Aelst, Pieter van  

Elise L. Smith

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b ?Alost; fl 1509–55).

Flemish tapestry-maker. He was the son of Pieter van Edingen Aelst, also a weaver of tapestries, and a member of his father’s workshop in Brussels. In 1509 he was cited as a restorer of Margaret of Austria’s collection of tapestries. In 1517 he was paid for tapestries of David and John the Baptist made for Henry VIII, and in 1547 and 1548 he was still listed as a tapestry maker for the court of Charles V. His mark, pva, has been found on four tapestry series, all made in collaboration with others: on five of eight History of Noah tapestries (Kraków, N.A. Cols), part of a series made by six Brussels workshops for the King of Poland; on seven of ten History of Abraham tapestries, after Bernard van Orley (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.); on two of eight History of Odysseus tapestries (Hardwick Hall, Derbys, NT); and on three of six ...

Article

Aemilia Ars  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Società Cooperativa Aemilia Ars]

Workshop founded in Bologna in 1898 by the architect Alfonso Rubbiani (1848–1913), modelled on the English Arts and Crafts Movement; its formal name was Società Cooperativa Aemilia Ars. At first the workshop produced a wide range of products, including glass and pottery, but from 1902 to 1914 its principal products were textiles, especially lace....

Article

Agostino D'antonio di Duccio  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Italian, 15th century, male.

Born 1418, in Florence; died before 1498, in Perugia.

Sculptor, architect. Religious subjects.

Florentine School, Perugian School.

The son of the weaver Antonio di Duccio, Agostino d'Antonio di Duccio produced works in marble and terracotta of the Della Robbia type. His earliest known works are four low reliefs in Modena Cathedral. While living in Florence in ...

Article

Ahyi, Paul  

Christine Mullen Kreamer

Publication History:

Published online:
21 February 2000
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Jan 25, 1930; d Lomé, Jan 4, 2010).

Togolese painter, sculptor, engraver, stained glass designer, potter and textile designer. Beginning in 1946, he received his secondary education in Dakar, where he also worked in an architecture firm. He travelled to France and received his diplôme supérieur from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. A versatile artist, Ahyi is best known for his murals and for monumental stone, marble and cement public sculptures. His work reflects the fusion of his Togolese roots, European training and an international outlook, and he counts among his influences Moore, Braque, Modigliani, Tamayo, Siqueiros and Tall. His work combines ancient and modern themes and materials, maternity being a prominent topic. The messages of his larger, public pieces operate on a broad level to appeal to the general populace, while smaller works often reflect his private engagement with challenges confronting the human condition. His compositions are both abstract and figurative and evoke the heroism and hope of the two world wars, Togo's colonial period and the struggle for independence from France, as well as the political efforts of the peoples of Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine. Ahyi has won numerous international prizes, including the prize of the city of Lyon (...

Article

Ainu  

Hans Dieter Ölschleger

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Emishi; Ezo; Mishihase]

Peoples who once lived in northern Japan and are now restricted to the islands of Hokkaido (Japan), southern Sakhalin and the Kuril chain. The Ainu live in an area that has been influenced by Chinese, Siberian and especially Japanese culture. Until the 17th century, when the Ainu began to practise small-scale agriculture in south-western Hokkaido, they subsisted by fishing and hunter–gathering. Although the gradual Japanese colonization of Hokkaido had almost eradicated Ainu culture by the early 20th century, the post-war period has witnessed a revival of Ainu culture and language.

Ainu art is characterized by the preponderance of geometric designs. Some have parallels in Japan proper, while others show similarities with motifs found in the art of the Gilyaks, their northern neighbours on Sakhalin, of the Ostyaks and Samoyeds of northern Siberia and even of the peoples of the north-west coast of North America. Human and animal motifs are extremely rare and restricted to the decoration of libation ...

Article

Akanji, Adebisi  

Bolaji V. Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
21 March 2000
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Oshogbo, 1930s).

Nigerian sculptor and textile artist. He started out as a bricklayer and received no formal training. One of his earliest commissions was for 12 cement pieces for Ulli Beier’s Mbari-Mbayo Club at Oshogbo. He exhibited internationally in the 1960s and 1970s and is best known for his public pieces, such as openwork cement screens based on Yoruba doors (see Yoruba §I) for museum entrances and petrol stations, such as that opposite the Mbari-Mbayo Club, Oshogbo. In these playful and animated works, elongated figures are presented in scenes from daily life, such as buying petrol, in masquerades and in fantastic imaginary scenes. Akanji also created free-standing cement sculpture, brightly painted human and animal figures.

U. Beier: Contemporary Art in Africa (New York, 1968), pp. 141, 149–54, 156, 161, 164 M. Mount: African Art: The Years Since 1920 (Bloomington, 1973), pp. 153–7, 199 B. Kelly and J. Stanley: Nigerian Artists: A Who’s Who & Bibliography...

Article

Alaïa, Azzedine  

Pamela Elizabeth Grimaud

Publication History:

Published online:
02 July 2009
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Tunis, Feb 2, 1935).

French fashion designer, of Tunisian birth. Alaïa is renowned for his ‘second skin’ fashions and masterful cutting techniques (see fig.). Christened the ‘King of Cling’ by fashion journalists, Alaïa rose to prominence in the 1980s following years of realizing commissions for a loyal and select clientele. His designs are modern, overtly feminine in their celebration of the female form and, in Alaïa’s own words: ‘not sexy, voluptuous’. Alaïa’s sculpted fashions have been known to render other designers’ fashions unwearable—they simply feel too large in comparison.

Born in southern Tunisia, Alaïa was raised by his maternal grandparents and at the age of 15 undertook the study of sculpture. Realizing soon after that sculpture was not his calling, and serendipitously passing a dressmaker’s window on his way to classes, he saw a sign for an assistant. He was hired for the task of finishing hems at five francs apiece. Alaïa rose quickly to become a favourite of Tunisian high society, copying for the local clientele the work of the great ...

Article

Alaux, Joseph  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 18th century, male.

Born 1728, in Lautrec (Tarn); died probably, in Lautrec (Tarn).

Painter, decorative artist, tapestry maker.

Alaux's father was Pierre Alaux, a master tapestry maker, and his grandfather was Gilles Alaux, a master sculptor.

Article

Alaux, Pierre  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 18th century, male.

Born c. 1690, in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne); died before 1753.

Tapestry maker.

Alaux was the son of the master sculptor Gilles Alaux.

Article

Albers, Anni  

Nicholas Fox Weber

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Anneliesenée Fleischmann]

(b Berlin, June 12, 1899; d Orange, CT, May 10, 1994).

American textile designer, draughtsman and printmaker, wife of Josef Albers. She studied art under Martin Brandenburg (b 1870) in Berlin from 1916 to 1919, at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg (1919–20) and at the Bauhaus in Weimar (1922–5) and Dessau (1925–9; see fig.). In 1925 she married Josef Albers, with whom she settled in the USA in 1933 after the closure of the Bauhaus, and from 1933 to 1949 she taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina; she became a US citizen in 1937. Her Bauhaus training led her as early as the 1920s to produce rectilinear abstract designs based on colour relationships, such as Design for Rug for Child’s Room (gouache on paper, 1928; New York, MOMA), but it was during her period at Black Mountain College that she began producing her most original work, including fabrics made of unusual materials such as a mixture of jute and cellophane (...

Article

Albers, Anni  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

maiden name: Fleischmann

German, 20th century, female.

Active in the USA.

Born 12 June 1899, in Berlin; died 10 May 1994, in Orange (Connecticut), USA.

Draughtswoman, textile designer, printmaker.

Having studied in Berlin and Hamburg, Anni Albers went on to study at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1930. She married Josef Albers and became an assistant teacher at a weaving workshop. In 1933, the two emigrated to the USA, founding the art department at Black Mountain College, a newly established liberal arts school in North Carolina. In 1949, Anni and Josef moved to New Haven (Connecticut) where he served as chair for the design department at Yale University.

As early on as her first teaching post at the Bauhaus, where she ran technical classes, she taught students to combine natural and synthetic materials in weaving, saying: ‘The material determines its own limits in the face of the tasks imposed by the imagination.’ After emigrating to the USA, she continued to teach this philosophy at Black Mountain College and was thus part of the considerable influence exerted by the college on the artistic movement that would go on to become the American School of the 1940s. Challenging historical distinctions between high and low art forms, she carved out space for fibre arts within the discourse of fine art. Her pedagogical approach not only integrated art, craft, and industry, but also emphasised the cultivation of moral character, self-sufficiency, and independence from machinery....

Article

Albert the painter  

Anna Nilsén

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Albertus Pictor]

(fl. c. 1460; d after 1509).

Painter and textile designer, active in Sweden. According to a signature found in Sala Church, Uppland, his real name seems to have been Albertus Immenhusen. He was probably of German origin. He married in 1473 and was a burgher of Stockholm, where he ran a workshop for liturgical embroidery. Apparently well-to-do, during the years 1501–1507 he paid a higher tax than any other painter in Stockholm. About this time he also seems to have delivered an altarpiece to the Brigittine convent of Naantali (Swed. Nådendal) in Finland. He is last mentioned in 1509, when he played an instrument, probably the organ, at the Corpus Christi Guild of Stockholm.

Albert thus had many talents, but his main field must have been wall painting. His earliest works are in Södermanland and include the signed wall paintings in the church at Lid, where he also painted his self-portrait. It has been conjectured that Albert may have been an apprentice of a Master ...

Article

Alcaraz  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Spanish centre of carpet production in Murcia. Alcaraz was one of the two principal centres (together with Cuenca) of carpet production in 15th- and 16th-century Spain. The hand-knotted carpets are tied with a single-warp symmetrical knot (known as the Spanish knot) on an undyed woollen foundation. Several surviving 15th-century examples imitate Turkish carpets of the ‘Holbein’ variety, but the colouring is often different (Turkish red being replaced by blue and gold) and in the borders the Kufic inscriptions are replaced by geometrical or floral patterns. In the 16th century the red colouring became less vivid, possibly because of problems with the cochineal dye imported from Mexico. There was considerable variety of design, but in the 15th century the most common pattern consisted of wheels in rectangular compartments; in the 16th century the wheels softened into wreaths and the compartments assumed a variety of shapes or disappeared altogether.

A. Bartolomé Ariza...

Article

Alençon lace  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Fr. point d’Alençon]

Type of lace produced in France. In 1675 a group of 30 Venetian lacemakers was settled in the Norman town of Alençon by Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Louis XIV’s minister of finance). The Venetians instructed local needlewomen in point de Venise, but by the 1690s the distinctive local style known as point d’Alençon had emerged (see alsoLace §2, (iii), §2(iii)). Needlewomen adopted the net ground technique, and invented a series of new stitches.

Lace production was halted at the Revolution because of its association with the ancien régime, but revived under Napoleon (reg 1804–14) and again under the Second Empire. Lace is still produced in Alençon, supported by the Atelier National du Point d’Alençon founded in 1976, and there are good collections of Alençon lace in the Musée de la Dentelle au Point d’Alençon and the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle.

The term point d’Alençon now denotes a style as well as a place of origin. The style is characterized by a uniform mesh (called the ...