Lise Gujer
Born in 1893.
Died in 1967.
Swiss · Textile art · weaving and tapestries in dialogue with Expressionism.
Lise Gujer was a Swiss textile artist associated with the artistic community in Davos. Her meeting with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the early 1920s initiated a collaboration in which weaving became part of the painter’s formal investigations.
Her tapestries gave Kirchner’s drawn compositions a material presence. The Brücke-Museum emphasises their colour and complexity: mountains, animals, human figures and dancing scenes appear within them. It also recognises Gujer’s creative initiative within the collaboration.
The Städel Museum holds Life, a wool tapestry dated 1928–1932 and jointly attributed to the two artists. Initially intended as a door curtain, it had a central opening. This was closed in 1932, transforming the work into a wall hanging.
The preparatory drawing held by the same museum is, by contrast, a work by Kirchner. This distinction clarifies the respective roles of the designer and the weaver. The museum’s account records more than thirty textile works made by Gujer after his compositions.
Gujer began weaving on an old loom in 1922. Following an interruption, she resumed production from the surviving designs in the early 1950s. The Bündner Kunstmuseum devoted an exhibition to her work in 2024.
