Gunta Stölzl (5 March 1897 – 22 April 1983) was a German textile artist who played a fundamental role in the development of the Bauhaus school’s weaving workshop.
As the Bauhaus’s only female master she created enormous change within the weaving department as it transitioned from individual pictorial works to modern industrial designs.
Stölzl was born in Munich, Bavaria. She began her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in 1914, where she studied glass painting, decorative arts and ceramics. In 1917, Stölzl volunteered to work as a nurse for the Red Cross.
In 1918, after the World War I, she returned to her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, where she participated in the school’s curriculum reform. It was during this time that Stölzl encountered the Bauhaus manifesto. She decided to continue her studies at the newly formed Bauhaus school, taking the glass workshop and mural painting classes to earn her trial acceptance into Johannes Itten’s preliminary course. By 1920, Stölzl had received a scholarship to attend.
The textile department was a neglected part of the Bauhaus when Stölzl began her career, and its active masters were weak on the technical aspects of textile production. Stölzl was soon recognized as a leader, and she became a mentor to other students. After her trip to Italy, to view the art and architecture, and taking courses in textile dyeing at a school in Krefeld, Stölzl was able to reopen the Bauhaus dye studios in 1921. Later that year Stölzl collaborated with Marcel Breuer on the African Chair – made of painted wood with a colorful textile weave.
The first official Bauhaus exhibition took place in September 1923 in the Haus am Horn building, that was a highly modern cube structure made largely of steel and concrete. Each room was designed around its specific function, with specially made furniture, hardware etc which had been produced in the Bauhaus workshops.
The weaving workshop participated by creating rugs, wall hangings and other objects. With this exhibition, Walter Gropius released an essay titled ‘Art and Technology – A New Unity’ which seemed to have a great impact on the women of the weaving workshop. Despite the favorable reviews of their works, they began to move away from the pictorial imagery and traditional methods, and began working more abstractly.
After a brief departure, Stölzl became the school’s weaving director in 1925 when it relocated from Weimar to Dessau. Although she was not officially made a junior master until 1927, both the organization and content of the workshop were clearly under her control.
She expanded the department to increase its weaving and dyeing facilities. She applied ideas from modern art to weaving, experimented with synthetic materials, and improved the department’s technical instruction to include courses in mathematics.
In 1930, Stölzl issued the first ever Bauhaus weaving workshop diplomas and set up the first joint project between the Bauhaus and the Berlin Polytex Textile company which wove and sold Bauhaus designs.
In 1931 she published an article entitled “The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop”, in the Bauhaus Journal.
Stölzl’s ability to translate complex formal compositions into hand woven pieces combined with her skill of designing for machine production made her by far the best instructor the weaving workshop was to have. Under Stölzl’s direction, the weaving workshop became one of the most successful faculties of the Bauhaus.
She was dismissed in 1931, because of the intense pressure from the community and surrounding political atmosphere; a year later the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis.
After her dismissal, Stölzl returned to Zurich where she and her former Bauhaus students created a private handweaving business, but it was closed soon after, due to financial difficulties. She became a member of the Swiss Werkbund in 1932.
In 1934 she received a major commission to make curtains for the Zurich cinema.
In 1935, Stölzl and her former partner Heinrich-Otto Hürlimann opened S&H Stoffe. By 1937, Stölzl became the sole owner of Handweberei Flora (Hand Weaving Studio Flora) and had joined the Society of Swiss Women Painters, Sculptors and Craftswomen.
During the following decades, both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts acquired pieces of Stölzl’s work while she continued to work at her hand weaving business, creating mainly textiles for interior design. In 1967 Stölzl dissolved her business and devoted all her time to tapestry weaving, a large shift in focus. It was also in 1967 that the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired her designs and samples, resulting in major national and international collections.
Stölzl died in 1983 in Zurich.