Jagoda Buić Croatian, 1930-2022
Ophelia II, 1974
Wool and silk
160 x 97 cm
Though her career has been interdisciplinary and has spanned several decades, Buić is best known for her large-scale woven sculptures and installations. Trained as a theatre designer, she came to...
Though her career has been interdisciplinary and has spanned several decades, Buić is best known for her large-scale woven sculptures and installations. Trained as a theatre designer, she came to prominence in the mid-1960s when her ambitious woven pieces were exhibited at the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennial where they presented a three-dimensional form of woven sculpture that was shockingly radical for the time. She became one of the key figures associated with ‘fibre art’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Her ambitiously scaled work often references architecture and can been seen to have developed from a meeting of theatre and tapestry traditions. Fallen Angel is both exemplary of this ambition and a significant work in Buić’s output, as it was included in the landmark exhibition Wall Hangings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1969, which sought to integrate woven work into the domain of ‘fine art’. Curated by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen, the exhibition was presented in the museum’s main galleries instead of those dedicated to design and sought to promote the woven pieces as new and radical forms of ‘fiber art’ or ‘art fabric’.