Margaretha Reichardt

Margaretha "Grete" Reichardt , married Wagner-Reichardt (born March 6, 1907 in Erfurt ; † May 25, 1984 there ) was a German textile designer and graphic artist . Along with Gunta Stölzl, she was one of the successful designers from the Bauhaus textile workshop .

Life

Reichardt (top left) with the weaving class (1927/28) on the Bauhaus stairs

Folding armchair D4 by Marcel Breuer with the iron thread belts developed by Grete Reichardt; here as a re-edition of the Tecta company

After completing her school education in Erfurt , Margaretha Reichardt began a four-year training course at the Erfurt School of Applied Arts in 1921 . In April 1926, she began her five-and-a-half year course at the Bauhaus in Dessau with a preliminary course with Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy . After passing the preliminary course, the master craftsman, like most women, sent her to the weaving workshop under Georg Muche , from 1927 by Gunta Stölzl.

At the Bauhaus she took classes with Paul Klee , Joost Schmidt and Wassily Kandinsky . Since 1927 she experimented with different yarns and fabrics. She improved the properties of iron yarn and weaved sturdy, dimensionally stable belts, which Marcel Breuer later used to cover the tubular steel furniture he developed , such as the club armchair B 3 - later known as the Wassily chair - or the folding armchair D4. The fabrics she developed were used to cover aircraft seats in the 1930s. In addition, at the Bauhaus she developed fabrics with sound-absorbing and light-reflecting properties. While working at the Bauhaus, she designed numerous pictorial woven and knitted carpets and participated in various major Bauhaus projects, such as the design of the federal school of the General German Trade Union Federation in Bernau near Berlin or the opera café in Dessau.

After taking the journeyman's examination at the Bauhaus in 1929, she worked as a freelancer in the weaving mill from 1930. In July 1931 she completed her training at the Bauhaus as a textile designer with the Bauhaus diploma No. 54. After a short study stay in the Netherlands with the graphic artist Piet Zwart , she returned to her hometown Erfurt in 1933 and built up the Grete Reichardt hand weaving mill here from 1934 . She designed numerous fabrics for wall and floor carpets, decorative, furniture and clothing fabrics, but these were rarely industrially manufactured. During the time of National Socialism she was a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture . From 1936 she exhibited her hand-woven textiles in various museums and at handicraft exhibitions, including in 1936 in the Leipzig Grassi Museum . At the world exhibition in Paris in 1937 her designs were awarded; At the Milan Triennale in 1939 she received a gold medal for designs for industrial textiles. In 1942 Grete Reichardt passed her master craftsman examination.

After the Second World War she made textile designs for museums, theaters and public institutions. Shortly after the war she took part in international exhibitions with her designs. At the Triennale in Milan in 1951, she was awarded a golden honorary diploma for her hand-woven tapestries . In 1953, the freelance designer received an offer to teach at the Hamburg State Art School . In the following years Margaretha Reichardt was awarded numerous design prizes: In 1964, her designs received the “Gute Form” award at the Leipzig Trade Fair , five years later she received the certificate of honor from the Ministry of Culture , the Chamber of Crafts and the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . Until 1984 she trained over 50 students in her workshop in Erfurt- Bischleben . Since the 1970s, the artist has been committed to the preservation of the Bauhaus heritage in Weimar and Dessau.

In a new building area on the Ringelberg in Erfurt's Krämpfervorstadt , where the streets are named after famous Bauhaus artists, a street was named after Grete Reichardt.

museum

In the Erfurt district of Bischleben, Margaretha Reichardt's house was converted into a museum. Original looms are shown in the artist's workshop in the house designed in 1939 by the Bauhaus member Konrad Püschel . The building, which has been classified as a technical monument since 1987 , is now looked after by the Angermuseum in Erfurt.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1950 Grete Reichardt-Wagner , State Castle Museum Rudolstadt
• 1967/1968 Grete Reichardt, Weaver - Walter Gebauer, Potter - Professor Günther Laufer, metalsmith , Thüringer Museum Eisenach, Castle on the market; Gotha Castle Museum; Friedenstein Castle.
• 1968 Grete Reichardt, weaver - Walter Gebauer, ceramist - Prof. Günther Laufer, blacksmith , Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (Köpenick Palace)
• 1977 Grete Reichardt: Textile design , Weimar art collections.
• 1994 Margaretha Reichardt, Textile Art: 1907–1984 , Angermuseum Erfurt.
• 1995 Margaretha Reichardt, Textile Art: 1907–1984 art collections at the University of Leipzig.
• 2009 Margaretha Reichardt - from Bauhaus student to master of textile art , Apolda
• 2009 Margaretha Reichardt's student , Apolda.
• 2009 Margaretha Reichardt , Erfurt.

Works / museum exhibits (selection)

• Plug-in dolls from lessons with Josef Albers, Bauhaus Dessau
• Bauhaus jumping jack , Bauhaus Dessau
• Study VII for Industriebild XIII , 1928, together with Erich Borchert
• Fabric swatch , 1928, Art Institute of Chicago
• Tapestry canvas in St. Hedwig's Cathedral , Berlin
• Fabric cover for the B5 chair (Marcel Breuer); Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Literature (selection)

• Hanna Stirnemann, Grete Wagner-Reichardt: Art exhibition June to July 1950 , Rudolstadt, State Castle Museum.
• Grete Reichardt: Grete Reichardt hand weaving mill, Erfurt-Bischleben am Kirchberg Stedten , Somann 1962.
• Anneliese Hanisch: Grete Reichardt, O. Schöpfel 1967.
• Barbara Rausch: Grete Reichardt: textile design; Exhibition of the Weimar art collections in the Kunsthalle am Theaterplatz , exhibition catalog 1977, Weimar.
• Marlis and Bernd Grönwald : Margaretha Reichardt (1907-1984). Bauhaus tradition and creative work in the present . In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der HAB Weimar A-31, 1985, pp. 91-94.
• Angermuseum Erfurt, working group M. Reichardt and custodian University Leipzig (ed.): Margaretha Reichardt 1907–1984. Textilkunst , Erfurt 1995, ISBN 978-3-930013-00-5 .
• Kai Uwe Schierz, Patrick Rössler, Miriam Krautwurst, Elizabeth Otto (eds.): 4 "Bauhaus girls": Arndt, Brandt, Heymann, Reichardt , Dresden, Sandstein 2019, ISBN 978-3-95498-459-6 .
• Margaretha Reichardt . In: Patrick Rössler , Elizabeth Otto : Women at the Bauhaus. Pioneering modern artists. Knesebeck, Munich 2019. ISBN 978-3-95728-230-9 . P. 92.

Web links

• bauhaus100.de Margaretha Reichardt
• artnet.de: Exhibits by Grete Reichardt , accessed on October 24, 2015
• www.salve.tv. The Margaretha Reichardt House in Erfurt (video 5 min)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bauhaus Archive Berlin (ed.): The Bauhaus Collection . Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-922613-53-4 , p. 86.
2. ^ Jeannine Fiedler, Peter Feierabend: Bauhaus , Könemann, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89508-600-2 , p. 476.
3. ^ Jeannine Fiedler, Peter Feierabend: Bauhaus , Könemann, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89508-600-2 , p. 619.
4. ↑ formost.de: Margarethe Reichardt , accessed October 28, 2015.
5. ↑ bauhaus-online.de: Margaretha Reichardt ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 24, 2015. 
6. ↑ formguide.de: Grete Reichardt ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 24, 2015. 
7. ↑ zeit.de: Celebration without a festival, December 10, 1976 , accessed on October 14, 2015.
8. ↑ thueringer-allgemeine.de: The Ringelberg is well connected  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 28, 2015.  
9. ↑ erfurt.de: Margarethe-Reichardt-Haus , accessed on October 28, 2015.
10. ↑ erfurt-web.de: Margarethe Reichardt , accessed on October 21, 2015.
11. ^ Jeannine Fiedler, Peter Feierabend: Bauhaus , Könemann, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89508-600-2 , p. 171.
12. ↑ cooperhewitt.org: B5-Chair , accessed October 24, 2015.