Textiles: Pictorial Solutions

In 1917, the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) moved to Davos, where folk motifs increasingly influenced his work. On the pillow cover Dance from the early twenties, the focus is instead on urban artistes. The scene, rendered in petit point by Elsy Bosshart-Forrer, derives its appeal from its expressionist color scheme and the cinematic movement of muscular limbs, while the alpine Sunday scene with its strong division into layers is conceived instead as a static idyllic setting. These modern images bear a surprising resemblance to the Coptic weaving from the sixth to eighth century. The finely woven pieces show ecstatic dancers and, in analogy to the alpine fauna, the aquatic world of the Nile.