Greta Schödl

Greta Schödl (Hollabrunn 1929)

The whole body of research carried out by Greta Schödl for some years now appears to me a far-reaching enquiry into how to give analogical artistic expression to women, and women’s work with needle and thread. Schödl herself says: “I abandoned graphic art to adopt a wider series of signs, which gradually led me to analyse vibrations and oscillations using continuous strokes on flat surfaces, and then to investigate the particular behavioural patterns of thread”. In fact, the highly distinctive features characterizing Schödl’s work seem symbolically to paraphrase the deepest significance of what it is to be a woman in this world, to be part of life that slowly weaves the subtle mesh that forms the essence of femininity – a weave of intelligence, love, affect, and intense dedication to the everyday patterns of life and the elements they comprise. Yet while Schödl captures the female traditions of millennia, hers is also a gaze that seeks out and discovers new prospects. Weaving together the ‘things’ of life – especially those belonging to women’s lives – Schödl also succeeds in distancing herself, at times even casting an ironic eye on her subject. The transcription of the objects of this world takes on all the subtlety and finesse of an anthropological study.

(Lara Vinca Masini)