On Roswitha Grützke's Window Tapestries

In her Window tapestries Roswitha Grützke presents a sophisticated dichotomy so naturally, so very much as a matter of course that is does not at first glance appear as the feat that it undoubtedly is.

It is no mean achievement to have matched the ingenuity of a motif selection in which mullion and transom stand as metaphors of warp and woof so entirely with a painterly lyricism of execution.

Wool, linen, and cotton strands stress the concrete nature of the material surface, while clarity of drawing and mastery of colouring create an illusory picture plane.

The woven fabric is a membrane or interface between interior and exterior space, at once synonym and simile for the depicted window panes and hangings.

As in the ancient drawing technique of stretching thin gauze between the scene to be rendered and the draughtsman in order to facilitate the representation of the three-dimensional in two dimensions, window and daylight seem here to be caught in passage through the web of these unusually gratifying meetings of material and illusory worlds.

Ann Holyoke Lehmann, Berlin 1991
from: Roswitha Grützke: Woven Images 1982 – 1999, Tübingen/Berlin 2000.