13 Facts About Claire Zeisler

Claire Zeisler was an American fiber artist who expanded the expressive qualities of knotted and braided threads, pioneering large-scale freestanding sculptures in this medium.

Claire Zeisler preferred to work with natural materials such as jute, sisal, raffia, hemp, wool, and leather.

Claire Zeisler's work is influenced by and has influenced fiber artists in the 1960s and 1970s, including Kay Sekimachi, Lenore Tawney, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Sheila Hicks.

Claire Zeisler studied at the Chicago Institute of Design in the 1940s with Eugene Dana and the Illinois Institute of Technology where she was taught by the Russian avant-garde sculptor Alexander Archipenko and the Chicago weaver Bea Swartchild.

Claire Zeisler had her first solo exhibition, at the Chicago Public Library in that year, at the age of 59.

Claire Zeisler became a celebrated innovator in fiber sculpture only after her inclusion in "Woven Forms," a seminal exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City in 1963 and her introduction to knotting at the New York studio of Lili Blumenau.

Claire Zeisler's response was negative and revealed many of the prejudices that came from fiber art's low culture connotations.

Claire Zeisler perceived that knotting, although at the time used mostly in developing nations and by sailors, could free her from the geometric and two-dimensional limitations of the loom and would allow her to work in three dimensions.

In 1964, Claire Zeisler showed with Lenore Tawney and Sheila Hicks at the Museum for Arts and Crafts in Zurich, Germany.

European fiber artists up until the exhibit had been working in the tradition of flat loom tapestries, and even in comparison to Tawney and Hicks, Claire Zeisler's work departed the most drastically from this convention.

Claire Zeisler experimented in the making of art objects in the 1970s, with works such as Pages and Chapters that used stacks of textiles such as cotton and wool fleece to form thick shapes.

Claire Zeisler's work was presented in retrospective exhibits in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1982, Claire Zeisler was honored in New York City by the Women's Caucus for Art for her lifetime in art.