Lise Gujer’s carpets in the Brücke Museum: About weaving and working

What a monster this loom is! It is a rather small example, for use in the low rooms of Graubünden houses. Lise Gujer, the weaver of Ernst Ludwg Kirchner’s designs, lived in one.

In the Brücke Museum you can now see the tapestries that she created on this very loom, first from 1922 during Kirchner’s lifetime, then after a long break from the 1950s until her death in 1967. For the first time, the textile artist is receiving the recognition she deserves for her congenial implementation of Kirchner’s motifs.

Kirchner, who had been in Davos since 1917 because he wanted to escape the war and his fears, which had been exacerbated by drug use, was looking for someone in the early 1920s who could realize his ideas for tapestries. Gujer and Kirchner met in the social circle of the Davos spa houses, and Lise Gujer became friends especially with his partner Erna Schilling.

Kirchner entrusts her with his carpet projects – and is initially horrified: “It can’t go on like this because everything is drowning in gray,” he complains. The carpet “Farmer Couple, Cow and Three Farmers with Goat” clearly shows that the gray of the warp threads supporting the colored wool dominates; Apart from that, the shapes are awkward. But Lise Gujer learns quickly, so Kirchner’s anticipation – “Weaving has wonderful possibilities” – is soon confirmed.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner gives the colors

In the years that followed, Kirchner continued to bring new designs to Lise Gujer’s farmhouse. Kirchner, as a confidant later reported, “brought the new carpet designs into the living room and work began immediately. He explained the theme and indicated the colors, which the weaver noted in the draft with colored threads inserted.”

Such designs with colored pieces of thread can be seen several times. The cooperation with the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur makes the current exhibition possible under the title “Lise Gujer. A new way of painting”. The accompanying catalog also contains an illustrated catalog raisonné.

Lise Gujer, who weaved and, above all – which is a technical difference – used the templates reversed on her loom, which allowed a maximum width of 95 centimeters. Large carpets had to be sewn together from two panels.

In the 1920s, Kirchner immersed himself in the farming world that continued outside the Davos Magic Mountain scenery. Alpine pastures, haymaking, domestic animals, farmers on the way, these are the motifs that Kirchner put on paper and also used in paintings. Lise Gujer converted the templates into colorful carpets. Long after Kirchner’s suicide in 1938, she returned to working on his models, but now increasingly freely, even in small series, each unique piece designed differently.

The tapestries come into their own wonderfully in the intimate rooms of the Brücke Museum. Suddenly you think you see Kirchner as a mere initiator and Lise Gujer as the creator of powerful harmonies. The largest carpet she created for a collector was not available for loan; In its place hangs a photograph that Kirchner took of this major work full of figures.

Lise Gujer, born into a wealthy Zurich home in 1893, suffered from asthma and went to Davos in 1917. After a serious accident in 1922, she began self-taught weaving and knitting, and at the same time her encounter with Kirchner gave her life a new direction. She described him as an “artist with all his sunny and dark sides”. Only the sunny side is preserved in their carpets.