Margit Szilvitzky: Finding the Square. Works 1968-1988
Szilvitzky’s work emerges at the intersection of tradition and experimentation. Initially trained in applied arts, she was deeply familiar with textile’s history, but she rejected its constraints. Instead of treating fabric as a passive surface, she explored its dimensional possibilities, creating textile reliefs, geometric folds, and modular structures that engage with space rather than merely occupying it. Her practice was shaped by Hungarian textile traditions, but also by the modernist avant-garde, particularly constructivism, minimalism, and process art. Through folding, layering, and structuring fabric, she sought to deconstruct and reconstruct space, treating textile as both form and concept.
At the heart of her work is the square—not just as a geometric form, but as an intellectual principle. In many of her compositions, Szilvitzky experiments with grids, folds, and modular structures, treating textile as an evolving system rather than a static object. Her early works engage with texture and material contrast, often incorporating natural fibers, relief techniques, and collaged surfaces. Later, she moves towards geometric purity, using monochrome textiles, folded structures, and light-shadow play to explore the boundaries of material and void. Her textiles do not merely exist in space—they define space, disrupt it, and create new relationships within it.
This exhibition follows Szilvitzky’s artistic evolution in three sections, each exploring a key facet of her work:
Textile as a Living Structure – Here, fabric is more than surface—it is a material that breathes, moves, and expands. Szilvitzky experiments with woven reliefs, fiber sculptures, and natural materials, transforming textile into a three-dimensional entity. These works emphasize textile’s raw physicality, with an interplay of fibers, layers, and tensions.
Textile as the Core of Space – The exhibition’s central focus is Wall Hanging - Etude, an isolated, monumental textile work that serves as an anchor for the surrounding dialogue. Here, textile moves beyond ornamentation and becomes spatial architecture, both controlling and responding to its environment.
Textile as a Conceptual and Geometric System – Szilvitzky’s later works treat textile as a site of intellectual and structural investigation. She explores folding as form, grids as systems, and textile as a process-driven material. These works align with modernist explorations in minimalism and constructivism, yet remain deeply connected to the tactile nature of fabric.
By presenting textile as a site of transformation, Szilvitzky invites us to reconsider fabric as an architectural, sculptural, and conceptual medium. In Finding the Square – The Textile as Space, her work is repositioned within the broader history of abstraction and material philosophy, bridging the gap between tradition and innovation, structure and fluidity, thought and touch.
