To celebrate the launch of its latest collection, ‘Twisted Flower', at Milan Design Week, Kvadrat pays homage to one of textile design's unsung heroes, Frans Dijkmeijer, a Dutch-born artist whose technical prowess combined warp and weft into increasingly imaginative structural compositions. A two-part event will encompass an immersive, multidisciplinary exhibition at Triennale Milano, curated by Marco Sammicheli, and an installation at Kvadrat's Corso Monforte showroom, led by colour expert Giulio Ridolfo and designed by Binocle.
Frans Dijkmeijer: a life in textiles
Sammicheli describes Dikjmeijer's work as ‘textile tectonics', as each pattern he created was driven by structure and mathematical thinking, composition and variation. The multiple possible combinations of weft and warp are what interested him most; it's likely that he was colour blind, says Sammicheli, hence his lack of interest in colour, and most of his woven samples are based on a very simplistic palette of contrasting yarns in white, blue and black.
Dijkmeijer started his career in the 1950s, working for six decades for some of the most renowned textile brands, including Kendix, Artex and De Ploeg. ‘I think of him as a scientist, because he worked by unfolding the possibilities inside a single idea,' says Stine Find Osther, Kvadrat's vice president of design.
Among her fondest memories of the company's collaboration with the designer (which continued until his death in 2011) is the day he would send samples of his work to the Ebeltoft HQ for the weavers to replicate and develop them into commercial textiles. ‘They were small, plain white envelopes, filled with all of these tiny, wildly complex and fascinating weaving samples. Before even opening them, we just knew that we would find beauty.' Find Osther explains how he would start his work as an idea on the loom, and then go on to create dozens (sometimes hundreds) of non-identical repeats exploring the same idea.
Like a scientist, Dijkmeijer worked by unfolding the possibilities inside a single idea
Stine Find Osther
Dijkmeijer began collaborating with Kvadrat in 1992, but his textiles didn't have commercial success until 2004, which coincided with Giulio Ridolfo also starting to work with the company. Ridolfo came from a fashion background (he has a degree in fashion design from Milan's Domus Academy) and had designed and produced fabrics for brands such as Vitra and Moroso, one of Kvadrat's long-term collaborators, through which he connected with CEO Anders Byriel.
Meeting Dijkmeijer marked the beginning of Ridolfo's collaboration with Kvadrat and of him becoming one of the design world's most respected colourists. The first textile collaboration between Ridolfo and Dijkmeijer was ‘Steelcut', which is still regarded as one of Kvadrat's masterpieces. Featuring a surface that resembles small raised pyramids, its intricate construction is balanced by a simple visual expression, amplified by Ridolfo's interpretation, which enhanced its aesthetic intensity.
Through their collaboration, the colour maestro connected with Dijkmeijer on a deeper level than just practical and professional. Dijkmeijer had a strong passion for botany, for example: it wasn't an element that ever entered his work, but Ridolfo was able to introduce that shared enthusiasm for nature's light and hues into their textiles, and so make them accessible to the wider public. ‘I didn't want to be a shock to his work, but a polite intervention,' says Ridolfo. ‘I work like a restorer, bringing light back to the textile.' Speaking different languages – that of weaving and colours – made the collaboration meaningful in a way that might not have occurred had they shared more of their professional tools. ‘Giulio was able to make a harmony out of Dijkmeijer's work, like a musical arrangement of variations that made his textiles speak,' says Sammicheli.
‘Giulio was able to make a harmony out of Dijkmeijer's work, like a musical arrangement of variations that made his textiles speak'
Marco Sammicheli
One of the most fascinating facets of Dijkmeijer's personality was his passion for collecting. His chateau in Cestayrols, France, is like a cabinet of curiosities, filled with eclectic assemblages of his objects. He travelled the world in search of inspiration, and brought back the things he found, something that is also true of Ridolfo – Sammicheli likens them both to pilgrims in that respect. ‘Dijkmeijer's collecting was an incredibly accessible, human gesture,' says the curator. Scattered in neat displays across the chateau are Moroccan ceramics, textiles from Africa, toys, kites, shells, postcards, religious icons, woven baskets and lace samples. ‘They give us a pretty good idea of how he fed his imagination.'
A Milanese tribute to Frans Dijkmeijer's legacy
After his death, Dijkmeijer's wife Marianne drove his archives to Kvadrat's HQ, where they have remained ever since (‘I think they will forever be a source of inspiration for us,' notes Find Osther).
For the first time, a sample of this inspirational body of work is available for the public to discover through the Triennale exhibition. Titled ‘Frans Dijkmeijer: The Silent Pioneer', the exhibition will be the first time his work is presented to the public. Despite having been at the forefront of textile production for the best part of the 20th century and until his death, he is, in fact, barely known outside of textile circles. ‘The care for remembering and attributing value to all those who contribute to a project is, alas, a recent practice,' observes Sammicheli, whose curatorial practice has always veered towards the holistic. ‘The exhibition is born from the company's wish to recognise his role not only in the history of Kvadrat, but in a wider context.'
‘Dijkmeijer worked like an explorer, traversing unknown fields, knowing he would always arrive at something that would represent him'
Giulio Ridolfo
The display, conceived by Jacob Manz, senior manager of spatial design at Kvadrat, is based on a series of cardboard displays that encourage discovery, showing hundreds of woven squares from Dijkmeijer's experiments alongside objects from his collection.
To bring to life the plethora of influences at the core of this story, Sammicheli commissioned three contemporary artists working in different media to create new work for the exhibition. The interventions by algorithmic musician Renick Bell, visual artist Valentina Furian, and designer Francesco Tosini combine electronic music composition, computer graphics, digital animation and video art to bring to life themes that were central to Dijkmeijer's life and practice, such as repetition, pattern and botany.
Meanwhile, the Kvadrat showroom will be dedicated to the launch of ‘Twisted Flower', based on a Dijkmeijer weave with a chromatic concept by Ridolfo inspired by the gesture of gently twisting a blossom between two fingers. This reference results in a weave done with a two-tone yarn that is twisted to create a dynamic, unexpected rhythm on the material's surface. Ridolfo's ‘textile bouquet' is based on hues that merge neutrals and botanicals, ranging from base shades to vivid tones such as Ceanothus blue and Gossypium yellow. The showroom concept is based on a series of canopies imagined like ‘gentle shelters', where visitors are invited to sit and contemplate the material and colour.
‘I always say Frans was a Renaissance man,' says Ridolfo. ‘Through his work, he has been able to bring extreme innovation to extremely traditional looms. He worked like an explorer, traversing unknown fields, knowing he would always arrive at something that would represent him.'
On show from 20-26 April, ‘Frans Dijkmeijer: The Silent Pioneer' at Triennale Milano, Viale Emilio Alemagna 6, In Rainbows by Giulio Ridolfo' at the Kvadrat showroom, Corso Monforte 15
Frans Dijkmeijer’s chateau in France, where he lived, worked and collected until his death in 2011, is pictured across this story
