The DFG project focuses on the history of the textile and graphic designer Lena Meyer-Bergner (1906-1981) and her stints at the Bauhaus Dessau, in Moscow, in Geneva, and finally in exile in Mexico.
Lena Meyer-Bergner is usually known only as the wife of Hannes Meyer. In fact, however, she is an extraordinarily important figure in an era of international transmission of techniques of knowledge, pedagogy, and material transformation of everyday life. Working for social progress was Meyer-Bergner’s life maxim and evoked an art practice determined by social parameters. The project addresses questions about interdisciplinary and transcultural conditions of art practice, knowledge formation, and cultural identities in socioeconomically and politically completely contrasting situations (Weimar Republic during Hitler’s rise to power, Stalinism in the USSR, postcolonial Mexico after the revolution), making unknown and unexpected references between different artistic disciplines (i.e. textile technology, weaving, information design, urban planning, political enlightenment).