Otti Berger: Weaving for Modernist Architecture

Otti Berger (1898-1944) was a hugely talented Jewish textile designer, born in present-day Croatia, who both studied and taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. She found temporary refuge in the UK in 1937-8 but failed to thrive here, and ultimately perished in Auschwitz.

Berger created fabrics that fundamentally changed the understanding of what textiles could be and do. A core member of the experimental approach to textiles at the Bauhaus, she also was a female entrepreneur in the frenzied time that was the early 1930s in Berlin. Yet to date Berger’s textile work has only been explored in fragments.

To mark the publication by Hatje Cantz of a major new book entitled Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture, Berlin-based artist Judith Raum, the book’s contributing editor, will talk about this challenging yet rewarding project. The book is the first comprehensive study of the complexity and beauty of Berger’s work and makes her treatise on fabrics and the methodology of textile production accessible in full for the first time. It also highlights the largely unrecognized significance of textiles in the history of architecture and design. Judith will be joined by British design historian Tanya Harrod, author of the chapter about Berger’s time in England.

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From 12 March until 24 August, the temporary bauhaus-archiv in Berlin will play host to an installation by Judith Raum, also entitled Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture. The exhibition features a new video piece alongside two large scale wall-spanning fabrics.