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Textile art lies at the core of our art and cultural history. Humans have always exploited materials at hand to make objects of both ornamental and practical value. This urge to create testifies to the surplus energy and will to interpret the world and create things of beauty, almost regardless of time and place. Textiles have been produced in Norway since time immemorial, particularly by women, in towns and the old farming communities, and by professional artists from the 1900s right up to the present day.
Professional textile art arose from different standpoints with different objectives, something that can be exemplified by three names, weighty in the history of art and represented in the exhibition. The years around 1900 witnessed a burgeoning renaissance in the art of tapestry, with Frida Hansen and Gerhard Munthe as the leading artists. Frida Hansen took full responsibility for her tapestries from sketch to finished work, and she was the first tapestry artist in Norway to draw the cartoons for her tapestries herself. Gerhard Munthe was engaged by museum director Jens Thiis to design cartoons for tapestries in the Gobelin technique for the School and Studio of Art Weaving (Vævskole og atelier for kunstvævning), founded in 1898, at the National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design (Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum).
A completely new chapter began in the textile art with Hannah Ryggen who used tapestry as her means of responding to world events. She became a highly respected and widely acknowledged artist, with her political statements constituting important contributions to art history. Ryggen became a model and great inspiration for many younger tapestry artists.
We have seen a new flowering in the discipline in the past fifteen years. A young generation of artists, born after 1970, is attracting notice. Tactility, texture and expressive textural power are keywords for this fever.
In 2017, the organization of Norwegian Textile Artists will celebrate its fortieth anniversary. Fibre Fever salutes the organization.
