New Acquisitions
Trackings by Anne Wilson
In 2018, the Fondation Toms Pauli has acquired Trackings, an original work of the American artist Anne Wilson, exhibited at the 14th Lausanne Tapestry Biennal in 1989.
The Fondation Toms Pauli modern tapestry collection has been enriched in 2015 by ten works by the distinguished twentieth-century textile artists: Jagoda Buić, Lia Cook, Pierre Daquin, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Lurçat, Mario Prassinos, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, and Hideho Tanaka.
Ten works by leading New Tapestry artists from Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan have been added to the Fondation Toms Pauli modern art collection through the generosity of several artists, collectors and private donors.
These works, which include classical tapestries by Jean Lurçat and Mario Prassinos, spectacular compositions by Sonia Delaunay and Pierre Daquin, a late work by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, and notable pieces from the Lausanne Tapestry Biennials by Jagoda Buić, Lia Cook and Hideho Tanaka, are striking examples of the development of textile art during the second half of the twentieth century. They are also a reminder of the importance of the role of international research laboratory played by the Lausanne Biennials from 1962 to 1995.
The Jean Lurçat tapestry
The Mexico tapestry, acquired by a patron of the arts and donated to the Fondation Toms Pauli in 2013, is a commendable addition to the artist’s existing works in the collection. This very decorative tapestry, woven in the Tabard workshop in Aubusson, is characteristic of Jean Lurçat’s post-war work.
Principal Acquisitions
The Pierre and Marguerite Magnenat Collection
The first editions of the Tapestry Biennials had brought contemporary textile art to the attention of Pierre and Marguerite Magnenat, and by the mid-sixties they had already begun to build a collection of textile artworks. The seventy-six variously formatted pieces of the grouping include tapestries, installations, sculptures, mini-textiles, collages, paintings and drawings, an important part of which comprises works by the Polish artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz.
In 1979, Pierre Magnenat founded the Pierre Pauli Association and remained president until 1999. On his initiative, all the works of the Association’s textile collection were donated to the State of Vaud in 2000. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fondation Toms Pauli from 2000 until his death in 2009.
The Alice Pauli donation
Alice Pauli, recognised for her commitment to artists and for the dynamism she brought to the Lausanne artistic scene for over 50 years, has donated to the Fondation Toms Pauli, since 1999, a number of tapestries from her personal collection. In 2012, she made a gift of an ensemble of twenty-two works to the Fondation Toms Pauli, as a token of her support for the project of a new museum hub which will include the Fondation Toms Pauli.
This donation groups major names in twentieth-century textile art – Abakanowicz, Buić, Hicks, Lurçat, Łaszkiewicz and Rousseau-Vermette – and has enabled the Fondation Toms Pauli to constitute one of the most important collections of the works of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jagoda Buić, the two international artists who reinvented tapestry art and courageously inserted it into the mainstream of modern art.
Alice Pauli, owner of the Galerie Alice Pauli since 1962, worked together with her husband Pierre Pauli and the artist Jean Lurçat to set up the CITAM and the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials.
Works of Elsi Giauque
In 2007, the Fondation Toms Pauli acquired three representative works of this important artist who pioneered the New Tapestry movement in Switzerland. Elsi Giauque started focusing on transparency in 1945, working with exposed warp threads which produced subtle variations in colour and geometric forms in space. The Fondation Toms Pauli also purchased two of the five Feminist elements presented at the 1977 8th Tapestry Biennial.
Embroidered pictures by Lissy Funk
In 2005, thanks to the generosity of the inheritors of the Zurich artist Lissy Funk (1909-2005), the Fondation Toms Pauli could add eleven of her works to its collection.
Although Lissy Funk never abandoned her loyalty to wall hangings, her works can hardly be called tapestries. They are not weavings, but needle embroideries on a support material. This artist’s works, some of which are strikingly large considering the technique, create a strong impact with their intense and subtle palette of colours, the complexity of their composition, and the richness of their texture.
