Günta Stölzl

(1897, Munich–1983, Zurich)

Günta Stölzl, Easter 1929
Photograph (exhibition copy)
Courtesy Monika Stadler and Yael Aloni

Cards with samples of fabrics made by Günta Stölzl, 1930s
Fabric and paper, 26.5 × 18 cm and 27.8 × 20 cm
Courtesy Monika Stadler and Yael Aloni

Kitty van der Mijll Dekker on a weaving loom at the Bauhaus Dessau, 1932
Photo: Senta Goerke, Bauhaus (exhibition copy)
TextielMuseum, Tilburg

In her 1928 article “From a Suit to a Drawing and Fabric,” Varvara Stepanova dreamed that the artist’s work in the textile industry would not consist of “applying decorative patterns to finished fabric,” but of inventing new ways of coloring and processing fabrics and introducing new materials. An experiment of this type was done in the laboratory conditions of the Bauhaus Dessau, when in 1926 Günta Stölzl became head of the weaving workshop and the school’s first female professor. At the core of textile practices at the Bauhaus, which were largely the domain of female artists working manually on looms, there was also abstract ornament, however they were not printed (either using metal rollers on cheap cotton or wooden blocks on expensive silk) but woven using multi-colored threads. The Bauhaus fabrics were conceived as prototypes for industrial production and, as with the constructivist textiles, they were designed to meet the requirements of functionality and utilitarianism. That notwithstanding, the “women’s department,” as Stölzl called her workshop, was inspired by traditional Peruvian textiles and introduced new materials, in particular sound-absorbing and light-reflecting fabrics. In 1931, two years before the Bauhaus was shut down by the Nazis, Günta Stölzl, as the wife of a Jew (the architect Arieh Sharon), was dismissed and forced to emigrate to Switzerland, where she continued to weave.