The Fashion and Textile Museum has started a major exhibition of works on fabric by leading 20th-Century artists, beginning in the 1910s with designs by the Vorticist painter Wyndham Lewis and the artists of Bloomsbury’s Omega Workshops.
The Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy was the first 20th-century artist to become seriously and successfully involved in producing textile designs. After the war the movement to create ‘a masterpiece in every home’ flowered with the involvement of leading contemporary artists: John Piper, Salvador Dalí, Ben Nicholson and Steinberg. Eventually, these art textiles were turned into commercial clothing: a Joan Miró dress, a Salvador Dalí tie.
This exhibition is an important and comprehensive survey of this art form in Britain and America. There are approximately 200 textile designs, many of which have never been on public display before.
The Curators of the exhibition, Geoff Rayner and Richard Chamberlain, say ‘This exhibition allows a remarkable glimpse of how ordinary people were once able to directly engage in a personal and intimate way with high modern art through their everyday clothing and the furnishings of their homes’.
Artist Textiles runs from 31 January – 17 May 2014. The Fashion and Textile Museum is at 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF.
