Beschreibung:

Grete Reichardt Rare rug, for a child's room designed 1929, produced 1940s Tapestry-woven wool. 60 1/4 x 38 in. (153 x 96.5 cm)
Provenance Private collection, Berlin Thence by descent Literature Das Bauhaus Webt: Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus, Berlin 1998, p. 173, cat. no. 197 Catalogue Essay A student at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1925-1931, Grete Reichardt enrolled in the preliminary course taught by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy and later specialized in the weaving workshop alongside textile designer Gunta Stölzl among others. Having left the Bauhaus before it moved to Berlin, Reichardt worked as a graphic designer for Piet Zwart and later established her own weaving studio. In 1939 she received a Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale and a Golden Honorary Diploma from the Manufacture des Gobelins in 1951. Historically overshadowed by their more prominent male peers, the women weavers of the Bauhaus have gained stature in recent years as new scholarship highlights their accomplishments and their dedication to a craft traditionally associated with the most basic functions. Reichardt is perhaps best known for the significant role she played in developing Eisengarn, a fabric employed by Marcel Breuer and other leading Bauhaus furniture designers for their tubular steel furniture. While they were developing new textile technologies for mass production in the modernist vein, the designers of the weaving workshop were also producing studies in color theory and abstraction on their traditional looms. It is no coincidence that the size of a child’s rug, such a popular product of the weaving workshops, also approximates the proportions of a painting. The present design was produced in only four examples, the first three of which were made before World War II. Reichardt herself subsequently wove the present lot using the same loom employed earlier in the Bauhaus workshop, which she kept after the closing of the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1933. Examples of this rare design are in the permanent collection of both the Stiftung Bauhaus, Dessau and the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar. Read More