Tapestry and Wall Hanging
Woven tapestries and other textiles made for walls, from medieval and royal workshops to modern weavers and fibre artists.
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About
In true tapestries, coloured weft threads are woven only where each colour is needed, packed so tightly that they hide the warp. Weavers usually followed a full-size painted design called a cartoon, and on a low-warp loom they worked from the back, which reversed the image. Sets hung in castles and churches kept rooms warm and displayed wealth. The Apocalypse hangings at Angers were woven in the late 14th century, Raphael designed cartoons for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, woven in Brussels around 1520, and Louis XIV's Gobelins manufactory in Paris produced royal suites.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Jean Lurçat revived weaving at Aubusson with bold, simplified designs. Postwar artists took weaving off the wall into space: Josep Grau-Garriga and Magdalena Abakanowicz made thick, sculptural hangings, while Mathieu Matégot and Jan Yoors wove modern pictures. Today Abdoulaye Konaté assembles large dyed-cloth compositions and Christina Forrer weaves wry, cartoon-like scenes.
