Jacqueline Groag

Jacqueline Groag (married Blumberger (also Bloomberg ); born April 16, 1903 in Prague , Austria-Hungary as Hilde Pick ; died January 13, 1986 in London ) was an Austrian-English artisan and designer. She is considered a pioneer in textile design .

Life

After the death of her husband in World War I , she applied to the Vienna School of Applied Arts in 1926 . She soon received special support from Franz Cizek and Josef Hofmann due to her unconventional work . In the years to come she specialized in textile design and created a wide variety of textile patterns. She quickly made a name for herself in German-speaking countries and sold her designs to the Wiener Werkstätte and a large number of other customers. After graduating from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna , Hilde Bloomberg, who was already known throughout Europe, worked as a freelance worker and designed, among other things, textile samples for the Wiener Werkstätten and the Vienna Secession .

In 1930 she went to Paris and presented her work at fashion houses such as Chanel , Lanvin , Elsa Schiaparelli and Paul Poiret , from whom she received orders. In 1931, Hilde became engaged to her second husband Jacques Groag and moved with him back to Vienna.

In 1931, Hilde Bloomberg was awarded a prize at the Paris Colonial Exhibition. Over the next few years she specialized in the design of clothing and upholstery fabrics as well as curtains and further developed her style. She traveled to Germany, New York and many other fashion metropolises and used her fiancé's good relationships with personalities such as Oskar Kokoschka , Paul Klee and Sigmund Freud . Due to the rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Austria, the Wiener Werkstätte was closed in 1932. Hilde Bloomberg continued to work on her designs and was inspired by various places such as the Croatian island of Arbe .

In 1933 she won another award for her innovative textile design at the Triennale in Milan. Four years later, she presented her designs in the Austrian pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair , where she was awarded a gold medal. In the same year she married her fiancé Jacques and called herself Jacqueline Groag from then on.

After the annexation of Austria, the couple fled to England in 1939 and found shelter with an old friend. Jacques and Jacqueline built a new life for themselves in London and that's how the young designer met her future assistant Karin Willinger. Charles Reilly, a friend of Jacques, published an article about Jacqueline and her work in Art and Industry Magazine in 1942. A number of other articles followed, which further made Jacqueline Groag known. She became a member of high society in London and set up her own design studio.

In 1946, Jacqueline Groag took part in the “Britain can make it” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum , a showcase for British industry. She achieved worldwide recognition and experienced the high point of her career. The designer Edward Molyneux hired Jacqueline Groag for one of his clothing collections and even the then young Princess Elizabeth wore Jacqueline's design. The textile designer received British citizenship in 1947.

Jacqueline Groag knew how to combine innovative elements and materials with traditional, classic patterns and techniques of painting and drawing. For each order, she created a new pattern, always focusing on the specific framework conditions. In 1949, Jacqueline Groag redesigned a coffee house with her friend Misha Black and subsequently received a large number of follow-up orders from restaurants. In the mid-1950s she was also successful in the United States of America and became a member of the Associated American Artists. In 1962 her second husband Jacques died. In the years to come, Jacqueline continued to work on numerous designs for the fashion and textile industries, mainly for friends and acquaintances. In 1984 she was honored with the British Royal Designer For Industry award.

literature

• Ursula Prokop: Groag, Jacqueline . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 62, Saur, Munich a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23029-5 , p. 395.
• Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain, Annamarie Stapleton: Jacqueline Groag: Textile & Pattern Design: Wiener Werkstatte to American Modern . Ed .: ACC Distribution. Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-85149-590-0 .
• Ursula Prokop: The architect and designer couple Jacques and Jacqueline Groag . Two forgotten artists of Viennese modernism . Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-205-77300-4 .

Web links

• Jacqueline Groag (1903–1986) , short portrait (in English)
• “Jacques and Jacqueline Groag” detailed conversation with Ursula Prokop in the radio series A Palaver freely available as stream, February 3, 2020