Li­se Gu­jer

In 1922, Lise Gujer came across an old loom in a house she had rented in Davos and began to gain experience in weaving tablecloths. In the same year, she met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the culturally stimulating Davos circle of friends and made her first attempts to produce tapestries based on his designs. This led to a close collaboration between the two, which lasted, with only a few interruptions, until Kirchner committed suicide in 1938. Lise Gujer proved to be an ideal sparring partner in her direct collaboration with Kirchner. After Kirchner's death, she set up a "Memorial for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner" in a house she had bought in the Sertigtal near Davos, with furniture and selected works by the artist. In the early 1950s, interest in Lise Gujer's extensive collection of weavings based on Kirchner's designs was revived and Lise Gujer began to resume production using the original templates she still had. This was the beginning of a ten-year period of activity that was crowned with great success and growing demand for the warp knitting. The exhibition in the Bündner Kunstmuseum, which was created in close collaboration with the Brückemuseum Berlin, tells the story of the life and work of Lise Gujer from the perspective of the textile artist who took up Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's ideas in a congenial way and continued them independently in the years after his death. In addition to the various versions of the individual warp knitting, the exhibition also shows the unique preparatory work, which provides a differentiated view of the collaboration between Gujer and Kirchner. In addition, numerous documents and images shed light on the artistic spirit that shaped this work. Following the presentation in Chur, the exhibition will be shown in the Brückemuseum Berlin.