Gunta Stölzl & Johannes Itten: Textile Universen / Textile Universes / Helen Hirsch, Kunstmuseum Thun, Christoph Wagner

The Bauhaus master Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983) and the Swiss Bauhaus master Johannes Itten (1888–1967) encountered one another repeatedly from their time at the Weimar Bauhaus through to the 1960s, across significant moments in their biographies within the experimental field of textile art. Their remarkable contributions to textile design are vividly brought together in this volume.

Few people are aware that the renowned Swiss Bauhaus master Johannes Itten devoted himself extensively to textile design. This publication therefore invites readers to rediscover Itten as a textile designer, alongside Bauhaus master Gunta Stölzl, who entered art history as a “classic figure of textile art.” After leaving Nazi Germany in the 1930s, both artists settled in Switzerland, where they not only renewed textile art through new methods of form and ornament creation, but also helped establish a modern network of Swiss textile art.