Canadian-American artist Miriam SCHAPIRO (1923-2015), who first came to attention in the late 1950s for hard-edge abstract geometric paintings, was a pioneering force in the Pattern and Decoration movement that emerged in the late ‘70s. Tidy Art (1976), from Shapiro’s series of painted fabric collages collectively known by the artist as Femmages, takes centre stage at Masterpiece Online. Her Femmages paved the way for the critical reception of craft as a respectable medium in feminist art circles of the time, as set out in Shapiro’s manifesto on the subject, Waste Not, Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled — Femmage, written in collaboration with Melissa Meyer. The antithesis of male-dominated Abstract and Minimal art movements, these works are colourful, hyper-feminine, kitschy and, above all, decorative.

Italian nonagenarian Greta SCHÖDL (b.1929) and the Franco-Cuban artist Carmen Lydia Đurić (known by her artist name HESSIE, 1936-2017) took textile a step further, using it as the basis for ‘mark-making.’ Hessie, a self-taught Cuban immigrant who lived in France until her recent passing, combined embroidery and collage to create a new language that incorporated domestic materials found in the home, such as paper, clothing, hair, dust, fabric, buttons and toys. Schödl, on the other hand, used text to cover her supports, layering fabric, canvas and handmade paper to create abstracted concrete poems on textile surfaces.

Colombian Olga de AMARAL (b.1932), whose major touring exhibition ‘To Weave a Rock’ opens at MFA Houston in July, and the late Polish fibre sculptor Barbara LEVITTOUX-ŚWIDERSKA (1933-2019) are linked together through their monumental ambitions, each making works measuring up to three-metres-wide. Working independently, both incorporated materials such as horsehair, sisal and cut fabric, constructing free-standing sculptural forms that extended the capabilities of fabric and the loom. Informed by the weaving traditions of their individual homelands, de Amaral and Levittoux-Swiderska equally embraced space, extending their textile-based architectural installations beyond both home and wall. The Croatian artist Jagoda BUIĆ (b.193o), a contemporary of de Amaral and Levittoux-Swiderska, worked on a similar scale but with a more cross-disciplinary focus drawing on her wider creative practice that encompasses scenography, set and costume design.

Renowned for her “spiders”, Louise BOURGEOIS’ paintings, drawings, and etchings mark her out as one of the most significant feminist artists of the 20th century. Her interest in fabric goes back to her childhood years when she helped out in her family’s tapestry restoration workshop. The Cross-Eyed Woman I (2004) comes out of her larger series around the subject. Bourgeois greatly admired the paintings of cross-eyed women by artist John Graham and, according to her assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, the artist used to cross her eyes to amuse her friends.