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A timeless weaver of defiance, retribution and wit
The celebration of universal human values in the tapestries of Hannah Ryggen still speak to us across the decades, says CHRISTINE LINDEY
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Hannah Ryggen: Woven Histories
Modern Art Oxford
BECAUSE she dared to challenge the entrenched categorisation of “high” and “low” art, the artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970) is little known outside Scandinavia.
By marrying the folk craft of weaving with the sociopolitical content of history painting — the pinnacle of the high art hierarchy — she so confounded critical assumptions that she was easily ignored.
Born in the Swedish city of Malmo to a cook and ex-sailor/labourer, Ryggen never lost her working-class consciousness. Aged 19, she became a school teacher and it was then that a friend, the school cleaner, introduced her to the pleasures of the folk art of weaving. At the same time, Ryggen studied art at night school where she learned academic principles and techniques.
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