Untitled (Space Hanging), ca. 1965

Silk (double weave) and brass
©  Trude Guermonprez; courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree.

Born to Jewish Austrian artists, Trude Guermonprez studied textile design in Germany, Sweden and Finland throughout the 1930s. When the Nazis took power in 1939, Guermonprez’s parents fled to the United States to teach at Black Mountain College, a holistic arts school that had been founded in North Carolina in 1935. Guermonprez herself would move to the U.S. in 1947, and taught weaving and design at Black Mountain College. In 1954, Guermonprez moved to the Bay Area and joined the faculty of the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts), eventually becoming chair of the department in 1960. Between 1961 and 1965, while teaching at the CCAC, she made a series of large-scale works she called “space hangings”—some of the earliest three-dimensional weavings created in the United States. Untitled (Space Hanging) consists of a single reverse-double-weave panel that connects along a central axis so that it maintains a crossed form when opened and suspended. Abandoning traditional tapestry weaving, Guermonprez devised several novel techniques: she left warps unwoven—resulting in a gauzy, transparent surface that appeared to shift in the light—and used pattern weaves to enhance the quality of movement.