The Textile Room

Textile art is currently undergoing a renaissance. The exhibition The Textile Room at the Museum Bellerive ranges from artisan home textiles from the 1910s to contemporary design. It shows the importance of Swiss textile art in the international art context and documents the impressive careers of its leading practitioners with virtuosic objects and numerous contemporary documents.
About a century ago, the Dada artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943), as a teacher at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich, steered her students’ floral embroideries toward geometric designs and thus initiated an innovative approach to textile techniques. Her student Elsi Giauque, whose kinetic spatial sculptures are now among the icons of textile art, is considered an important networker for the discipline in Switzerland. The height of the “fiber art” movement saw the creation of striking tapestries that make strong architectural impressions in public buildings. Designers such as Trix and Robert Haussmann produced extravagant designs for private homes. The exhibition traces this development and weaves textile art and design into a fascinating web.