Personatge
Portrait

Brigita Krasauskaite (Krasauskaitė)

(Briga)

Kaunas (Lithuania), 30-03-1972  

Període d'activitat: 1997 — Encara activa

Classificació geogràfica: Europa > Lituània

Moviments socio-culturals

Edat contemporània > Pensament contemporani (des de final del s. XIX)

Edat contemporània > Moviments artístics des de finals del s. XIX > Art des de l'últim terç del s. XX

Grups per àmbit de dedicació

Artistes plàstiques, visuals i escèniques > Artistes tèxtils

Context de creació femenina

Most people associate rug design with Persian carpets produced in modern workshops operated by rug weavers who are exclusively men. Carpet-weaving is not easy. Only the truly dedicated can hope to fashion an artful rug. Most women have left carpet-weaving because of falling prices and a crumbling support system. Still, a few slogs along for meager pay, for the sake of their families. Today, carpet-weaving is counted among the most classical forms of art, but who among the artistically inclined are aware that the earliest designs were created by women who did not sign or initial their works? It is crucial to remember and honor the significant contributions that female weavers have made to the art market of vintage and antique rugs.

Artist-designed rugs are nothing new. “In the sixteenth century and before, weavers all through the Arab world were seen as artists by the court, and they wove their names into their designs,” says Jaime Odabachian, owner of the eponymous (though differently spelled) ODABASHIAN, a custom handmade rug company that celebrates its 100th birthday this year. “Textiles have always been seen as art. They're just made in another medium.”

Previously, we find textile art in the hands of women since the Middle Ages, where jewel fabric , such as the Bayeux Tapestry or the Tapestry of Creation were made by the Benedictine nuns of Girona, both from the 12th century, which they did not only enrich but changed the very conception of Roman art.

Still, we do not tend to think of rugs as the work of individual designers or artisans any more than, say, a piece of pottery we instinctively turn over in search of a mark. This is changing as large and small rug companies are increasingly collaborating with established and emerging artists and designers.

Artist-designed rugs thrived in the middle decades of the 20th century, thanks to pioneering (and wealthy) Paris-based entrepreneur and gallery owner Marie Cutolli, who worked on pieces with some of the giants of modernism. She began commissioning artwork in the 1920s from Fernand Léger, Jean Lurcat, Louis Marcoussis and Pablo Picasso, with which she had pile rugs made in Algerian weaving workshops, says Cindy Kang, associate curator at Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation, who organized the museum's 2020 exhibition “ Marie Cuttoli: the Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray.” (The show was sadly truncated by the coronavirus outbreak, but the catalog is available on the museum's website.) In the 1930s, Kang continues, Cuttoli commissioned new art from Picasso, Joan Miró and Le Corbusier.

Among 20th-century female textile artists we find figures from the Bauhaus movement such as Anni Albers, who successfully combined textile craftsmanship with industrial production and abstract modernist design. We can also find Gunta Stolz, a great weaving artist, who focused on the design and weaving of abstract textiles to which she also made commercial and industrial use. Besides, Gunta was a teacher in the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus and made a very significant contribution to the development of the school's weaving workshop.
Dörte Helm was a textile artist who worked with Gropius and contributed to the Bauhaus exhibition with a four-part textile screen and geometric tapestry; Benita Koch-Otte, who created through embroidery. She also worked in designing interiors, a career she shares with Lilly Reich, although the latter figure is better known as a designer of interiors and objects, among which the design of the Barcelona Chair stands out (along with Mies van der Rohe) or the Brno Chair. Also the Bauhaus artist Kitty van der Mijll Dekker devoted herself to textile design and her tea towel is still being produced for the TextielMuseum in Tilburg.

Brigita Krasauskaitė is a textile designer from Lithuania. Brigita’s work resists the cheapened product that results from rampant consumerism and the drive to have everything instantly. Her rugs are the end result of a long process of creation that spans the globe and benefits from collaboration with a worldwide team of women. Combining the intellects of women of varied esthetical and artistic backgrounds and tastes, Brigita strives to create a platform for a union of expression that combines contemporary Western design and the rigor of ancient Eastern craft practices.

To date, Krasauskaitė’s rug designs have mediated at the intersection between the status of women throughout the world and the natural rhythms and landscape geometries that inspire artists to express the ineffable.

https://percarin.com/designers-r-1 

https://www.1stdibs.com/introspective-magazine/rug-collaborations/ 

Ressenya

Krasauskaite’s work builds on contemporary trends in pattern and asymmetry with designs that aspire to give the viewer an experience of motion, dimension, vibration, and luminescence. Brigita’s work sits at the intersection of practice and commerce and is the embodiment of her tenet: art into the industry. Her work strives to paint on a “canvas” that is too often relegated to a forgotten background and to draw it into a foreground that emphasizes and accentuates the space around it, be it the design hung on a wall as a piece of textile art, or laid on the floor as a functional carpet. The art of the rug is not merely the pattern, but the story and the message that is woven into the design. Centuries ago, rugs spoke in a vocabulary of symbols—a language now lost due to consumerism and commercial demand. Brigita’s designs offer meditations on form and function as objects of art and offer sumptuous floor coverings and meanings with which you interface and dialogue as the work touches your body.

Activitats

Justificacions

  • In both her work and her practice, Brigita Krasauskaitė is pioneering a return to a more equitably diverse industry. She creates designs that compete well in a shared field of work and offer support to craftspeople all over the world who even today live by ancient weaving and textile traditions.
  • Knotted rugs.
  • Edition collections with fine artists.
  • Hundred rug designs.
  • One of the first Lithuanian textile designers to weave in India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  • Nominated as one of top twelve rug designers in the 28th edition of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair.

Biografia

Brigita Krasauskaitė, born in 1972 in Kaunas, Lithuania, received her first Master's Degree in Textile Design from Vilnius Academy of Arts and her second Master’s in Art Business/Administration from the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Throughout her career, she has worked with a diverse assortment of highly respected art industry leaders and institutions. During that time, she has collaborated on various art/design projects and has exhibited throughout the world. Her designs are part of many private collections. Among other projects, Brigita has partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure Organization (USA) and designed the rug Lotus in honour of women journeying with breast càncer. Together with the Estate of F. N. Souza, she has curated the Chemicals Show of F. N. Souza in the RL Fine Arts Gallery, NY, NY. She advised and assisted Christie’s Auction House in the preparation of the Estate Sale of Francis Newton Souza for June 09, 2010, and the Francis Newton Souza and Maria Souza: Life Partnership in Art, The Shelley Souza Collection Sale for March 18, 2014. She is also the Art Advisor for Sasson Soffer Foundation, NY, NY and Trustee of Francis Newton Souza Foundation, NY, NY. Krasauskaitė has initiated and organized the addition of Sasson Soffer’s Midmien sculpture to Europos Parkas sculpture colllection edition.  

Currently, Krasauskaitė is the partner and creative director at Dandelion, LLC, a social impact rug company that specializes in creating unique, contemporary, hand-knotted rugs.

Obres


https://www.thewhiteroom.gallery/search?q=Brigita%20Krasauskaite

https://www.rugnews.com/news-archives/05252016-top-12-contemporary-rug-designs-at-icff-1904?iid=B03B36621FA54E8F889AC8A0A721681B

CARPETS/WALL HANGINGS 

Stand, 2016, 

Water Boxes, 2016

Illiuminated Shapes, 2016

D-Rug, 2017

Shade, 2017

Lotus, 2017

Record, 2017

Crown, 2017

Parchment, 2017

Frost, 2017

Greenpoint, 2017

Kaya, 2018

Twilight Dew, 2019

Radio City, 2020

Diamonds, 2021

Bibliografia

Krasauskaite, B. (2018). Trends Green. Cover Magazine, 53/Winter. 

Krasauskaite, B. (2018). Trends Foliage. Cover Magazine, 52/Autumn.

Krasauskaite, B. (2018). Design Fairs ICFF. Cover Magazine, 52/Autumn.

https://www.europosparkas.lt/Naujienos/Sasson_Soffer_Midmien.html 

Enfocament Didàctic

Art, Textile design, Art history, Decorative art.

Documents