Fiber art

Fiber art is fine art made from textile materials and techniques - weaving, knotting, plaiting, stitching and dyeing - treating fiber as a sculptural medium rather than a craft service. The field took shape in the mid-twentieth century, when artists trained at the Bauhaus and in craft traditions pushed tapestry off the wall and into space; exhibitions like the Lausanne tapestry biennials from 1962 gave the new work an international stage. Because fiber is soft, dimensional and bodily, fiber art broke decisively with the hard, monumental materials of modernist sculpture, and it also reopened the hierarchy between art and craft that had relegated textiles to 'women's work'.

Defining characteristics

• Textile materials and techniques used as fine-art media
• Soft, pliable forms that hang, drape or fill space off the wall
• Visible weave, knot and stitch structure used as surface design
• Emphasis on texture, tactility and the behavior of fiber under gravity
• Craft processes (weaving, dyeing) fused with abstract or organic form

Key figures

• Anni Albers (1899-1994) — Bauhaus weaver who established textiles as a modern art form
• Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017) — Creator of the Abakans - monumental woven forms that occupy space like sculpture
• Sheila Hicks (b. 1934) — American artist of wrapped, bundled and cascading fiber structures
• Lenore Tawney (1907-2007) — Pioneer of open-warp woven forms and dimensional fiber sculpture

Example works

• Ancient Writing — Anni Albers (1936)
• Red Abakan — Magdalena Abakanowicz (1969)

Sources

• Fiber art - WikiArt institution

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