Modernist textile designer and weaver Else Regensteiner was a masterful technician and instructor who was instrumental in transforming the specialty into an art form after World War II, experts said.
Instrumental in adapting the styles of the Bauhaus movement to cloth, Mrs. Regensteiner was known for her deft use of color and integration of materials such as metallic thread, plastics, leather, straw and found objects.
She also helped touch off a renaissance of the fiber arts at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a professor there for more than 25 years, about 14 of them as director of the weaving department, and wrote three books on the subject.
Mrs. Regensteiner, 96, died of heart failure Saturday, Jan. 18, in her Chicago home.
“She was the person who really established a professional teaching division [in textiles]” when she joined the staff of The School of the Art Institute in 1945, said Christa Thurman, curator of textiles, conservator and head of the textiles department at the Art Institute. With “her one-of-a-kind weavings” she showed an extraordinary sense of color combinations, Thurman said.
Carolyn Howlett, professor emeritus of The School of the Art Institute and a specialist in weaving, said student interest in Mrs. Regensteiner’s courses exceeded that in more traditional media such as painting and sculpture. Only the number of looms limited enrollment.
Born in Munich, Mrs. Regensteiner studied at the University of Munich before immigrating to the U.S. in 1936 with her late husband, Bertold. She was already an accomplished textile artist by the time she took a teaching job at Jane Addams Hull House in 1941.
“She was very inventive and experimental and willing to try new directions. And that was what we wanted,” Howlett said.
“The deviation from the standardized look was not complete until we got somebody who was willing to forget about all those past influences. She was very much interested in trying all kinds of materials” and willing to use nature as her reference point.
The school was also eager to exploit Mrs. Regensteiner’s ties to New Bauhaus artists, including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
While starting her career at the school, Mrs. Regensteiner and Julia McVicker opened reg/wick, a small studio that supplied interior designers, architects and industrial designers–including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Raymond Loewy and Henry Glass–with commissioned, hand-woven fabrics.
“She was just at that period where weaving changed from being just a craft to an art form,” said her daughter, Helga Sinaiko, who said her mother loved teaching but lived for her solitary moments at the loom.
Her work has been included in more than 75 solo and group exhibitions.Besides her daughter, survivors include three grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a step-great-grandchild.
A memorial service is being planned for early April in Chicago.
