From a small self-sufficient farm on the west coast of Norway, Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970) created an impressive body of politically inspired work with her monumental tapestries. She launched pictorial attacks on Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini, making a clearly audible stand for the victims of fascism and National Socialism. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is dedicating a major solo exhibition to the Swedish-Norwegian artist from September 26, 2019 to January 12, 2020. On the occasion of Norway's guest of honour appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019, the Schirn is offering the public in Germany a comprehensive insight into her oeuvre for the first time. In the roughly 25 tapestries on display, Ryggen addresses fundamental themes of being human and living in society: the atrocities of war, abuse of power, dependence on nature, and connections to family and fellow human beings. Many of the works deal with the events and political struggles of 1930s and 1940s Europe, while also reflecting the artist's socialist beliefs.
The exhibition presents Ryggen's monumental tapestries and also introduces the artist as a representative of a different kind of modernism-a modernism in which elements of folk art and mythology intermingle with political concerns and themes of everyday life
. In doing so, Ryggen explored a whole new range of motifs and used a traditional medium for a novel purpose: to communicate their powerful political messages to the public through tapestries that could be moved from place to place. In a present characterized by increasing inequality, nationalism, and populism, her uncompromising work appears to be of shocking topicality and demonstrates the necessity of standing up for the principles of humanism. The Schirn brings together works by the artist from the Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, the National Museum of Arts and Crafts and Design in Trondheim, which owns the most important collection of Ryggen's works, as well as from other Norwegian and Swedish museums and institutions, including the KODE - Art Museums and Composers' Houses in Bergen, the Office of the Prime Minister of Norway in Oslo, the DNB Art Collection, the Telenor Art Collection, the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, the Trondheim kunstmuseum, the Röhsska Museum of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg, the Malmö Konstmuseum and the Stockholm City Museum.
Text source and more information about this event: https://www.schirn.de/fileadmin/SCHIRN/Presse/Texte_deutsch_2019/Schirn_Presse_Hannah_Ryggen_dt.pdf
