Creation (tapestry)

Painter Noémi Ferenczy (1890–1957) was one of the most significant artists of the European textile in her age. She learnt the technique of weaving at the time-honoured Manufacture des Gobelines in Paris. She designed and executed her own tapestries, and even dyed the threads herself. The Creation is the first of her tapestries displaying genuine artistic sensibility and expressive power so typical of her mature oeuvre. Divided into a nine-part raster, the work has the Almighty Father in the middle with images of his creations all around. Below him is the first couple, Adam and Eve, still sinless. The whole surface of the tapestry is filled with the diverse flora and fauna arranged into the square fields. Each field – an autonomous work in its own right – is separated from the rest by a thin line yet the formal unity of the overall composition is unbroken. The tapestry is framed by a border of tiny flowers and leafy twigs. The artist drew greatly on works of distant ages: she was influenced by the structure and manner of representation in medieval stained glass windows, frescoes, the floral and animal figures of 15th–16th century tapestries. Already this early work of hers displays the later so typical two-dimensional, patch-like representation, subdued colour scheme and individual approach. Her gobelins were first shown to the Budapest public at the Ernst Museum exhibition of the Ferenczy family in 1916.