Otti Berger: Weaving for Modernist Architecture (Hatje Cantz 2024) is the first comprehensive study of Berger’s textile art. The book has been compile by Esther Cleven, Magdalena Droste, Tanya Harrod, Juliet Kinchin, Corinna Rader, Judith Raum, and Katja Stelz.
Otti Berger created fabrics that fundamentally changed the understanding of what textiles could be and do. A core member of the experimental approach to textiles at the Bauhaus, she was also a female entrepreneur in the frenzied time that was the early 1930s in Berlin. Working closely with architects of the New Objectivity movement such as Lilly Reich, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Hans Scharoun, she designed upholstery and wall tapestries, curtains and floor coverings that responded to novel types of use and production methods, and thereby redefined the relationship between aesthetics and function―with fascinating results. To date Berger’s textile work has only been explored in fragments. This book is the first comprehensive study of its complexity and beauty and makes her hitherto unpublished treatise on fabrics and the methodology of textile production accessible. Raum’s research offers an entirely new perspective on Berger’s oeuvre.
– Esther Cleven et al., Otti Berger: Weaving for Modernist Architecture (Hatje Cantz, 2024), book description
The text is in English. The book is lavishly illustrated photographs, sample images, weaving notes, and other historical material.
