ATTRIBUTED TO THEO MOORMAN (1907-1990)
1970s
England
41″ x 23″

“Hold a steady eye on the surface of the water and really see the moving patterns and colours that are there before you.” Theo Moorman, Weaving as an Art Form.

Theo Moorman attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London when weaving was still considered primarily utilitarian. She then began designing fabrics for interiors. She eventually invented the weaving technique which bears her name, a variation of plain weave in which a surface design is created by inlaying yarns under a fine tie-down warp, and thence transformed her craft into art. Many of her large commissioned works, their abstract designs inspired by nature, as well as by sculpture, can be found in churches and cathedrals in the United States and Great Britain. In later years, she concentrated on wall hangings like these, most of them designed to be hung in homes. She was most obviously influenced by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and other contemporary British modernists.