Silvia Heyden (Swiss-American, 1927-2015), Tapestry

Lot Details & Additional Photographs

Wool, linen, silk, and cotton, early 1980s, the bright purple and orange and cream colored yarns woven in biomorphic sections, evoking an imaginative landscape, with artist's signature label to verso, hanging bar and weight bar included.

55 1/2 x 58 1/2 in.

Published in Movement in Tapestry: Silvia Heyden, 1927-2015.

"The traditional way of weaving is from the bottom up, joining threads of different colors in horizontal lines. This was too static for me. My lines had to move and swing rhythmically from the very beginning." - Silvia Heyden

Born in Switzerland, Silvia's educational background was in art and music. Her art teachers, rooted in the Bauhaus ethos, considered weaving a representational domestic art of the past. But after moving to Durham, North Carolina in 1966, Heyden decided to focus primarily on weaving and explore the ideas that she had about what weaving could become. Over the next fifty years and 800 tapestries later, her work won numerous awards and she became seen as a trailblazer and icon in the international weaving world with her intuitive sculptural approach to fiber art.

Though raised and taught in the Bauhaus tradition, Silvia's weavings burst free of its constraints, and was instead directly inspired by the natural world, travel, and music. This piece could have equally been inspired by the mountains of Switzerland or New Zealand or the way water flowed harmoniously through rocks in the Eno River.

Silvia Heyden remains an icon in the history of weaving as an art form, and her work can be found in collections across the world. Earlier this year, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke held a retrospective of Silvia Heyden's work entitled, "Weaving Notes & Nature," her first major retrospective since 1972.

Excellent condition.