Pages

Monday 29 August 2011

Vienna Art and Design


Over the weekend I visited the Vienna Art and Design exhibition at the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria). The exhibition was focussing on the work of Klimt, Schiele, Hoffman and Loos between 1890-1920.

The exhibition showed not only paintings and drawings of the period but architecture, furniture, household goods and jewellery. Everything was decorated in the Art Deco style. The mathematical, geometric shapes are so inspirational and suitable for patchwork and quilting.
Everywhere we looked from a carving on a chair or a pattern on a vase or cup, there was a design that could inspire a quilt or a quilting design.


Last year we studied Art Deco in the Waverley Art Quilters group and I made the little quilt that is pictured above. The clean abstract lines of Art Deco was popular between the 1st and 2nd World War but obviously had its beginnings earlier than this.


We also studied Gustav Klimt with the Waverley Art Quilters. Klimt was born in 1862 and died in 1918. He is famous for his painting The Kiss. The little quilt that I made was inspired by his golden period. They had a quite a few Klimt paintings in the exhibition and it was so wonderful to see them after looking at them in books for so long. Paintings are like quilts, they always look so much better in real life. You don't have any idea of scale in books either. Most of the Klimt paintings we saw were quite large.

I should be drawing up quilt designs now before I lose the inspiration.

Bye for now,
Linda

No comments: