Hannah Ryggen

She was a pacifist who subscribed to Scandinavian feminist and leftist journals, and was active in the Norwegian Communist Party and international workers’ movements.[2] She paid close attention to the rise of fascism in Europe, and made work in direct response to it. Her 1935 tapestry 'Etiopia' (Ethiopia) was triggered by Benito Mussolini’s invasion of the African country. It was shown at the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, next to Picasso’s Guernica (1937).[3] Etiopia was also shown in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair, but there was a cloth covering the part of the scene with a spear piercing through Mussolini’s head.[1] In 1936 she wove one tapestry called 'Hitlerteppet' (The Hitler Carpet), with two decapitated figures kneeling before a hovering cross, and one called 'Drømmedød' (Death of Dreams) depicting prisoners and murderous Nazis in a concentration camp. According to Marta Kuzma, although Ryggan "shared and affinity with Käthe Kollwitz, who also selected as her narrative the social, spiritual, and political disorder of her time, Ryggan bypassed Kollwitz's tendency to draft allegorical figures (such as Black Anna) and instead identified historical individuals who forged, installed, and enabled the totalitarian regime in those years – Mussolini, Hitler, Göring, Quisling, Churchill, and the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun."[2]

Ryggen created about one hundred large carpets in her lifetime. Following the formal traditions of 17th and 18th century Norwegian folk textile arts, her works combine figurative and abstract elements. Her 'Henders bruk' from 1949 was the first textile artwork acquired by the National Gallery of Norway. Twenty eight of her works were shown in a solo show at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1962, and she was the first female Norwegian artist to be represented at the Venice Biennale, in 1964.[3] In 2012 a selection of her woven works were included in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.[4]

• Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1962)[5]
• Venice Biennial (1964)[5]
• Kunsthall Oslo (2011)[6]
• documenta (13) (2012)[7]
• Nasjonalgalleriet. "Hannah Ryggen. Verden i veven" (2015)[8]
• Modern Art Oxford Hannah Ryggen: Woven Histories (2017)[9]
• Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2019)[10]

• "Petter Dass" (1940)

• Marit Paasche. Hannah Ryggen - en fri (2016)
• Marit Paasche (Editor), Esther Schlicht (Editor). Hannah Ryggen: Woven Manifestos Prestel Publishing (2019) ISBN 9783791359267
• Marit Paasche. Hannah Ryggen: Threads of Defiance University of Chicago Press (2019) ISBN 022667469X

• Næss, Inga Elisabeth. "Hannah Ryggen". In Helle, Knut. Norsk biografisk leksikon (in Norwegian). Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
• Opstad, Jan-Lauritz. "Hannah Ryggen". In Godal, Anne Marit. Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Oslo: Norsk nettleksikon. Retrieved 18 October 2014.

• Hannah Ryggen at Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon

• The woman who kept Hitler and Churchill in stitches: Hannah Ryggen Woven Histories review by Skye Sherwin in The Guardian 14 November 2017
• In Pictures: Hannah Ryggen’s Defiantly Anti-Fascist Tapestries by Figgy Guyver in frieze magazine 25 September 2019