Danish textile artist Helga Isager will visit Latvia with talks and workshops

This December, the Danish Cultural Institute and the Goethe-Institut Riga are pleased to jointly welcome renowned Danish textile artist and designer Helga Isager to Latvia. From 10–14 December, Isager will lead a series of workshops and talks in Riga and Ogre, offering Latvian audiences insight into her distinctive approach to knitwear design—an approach deeply rooted in craftsmanship, contemporary aesthetics, and, most recently, the legacy of the Bauhaus. Her visit is related to the exhibition “The Whole World a Bauhaus”, currently on view at Zuzeum Art Museum, an exhibition the museum has realised in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Riga.

The Whole World a Bauhaus explores one of the most influential movements in modern design, presenting eight thematic chapters that reveal how the Bauhaus redefined the relationship between art, craft, technology, and society. Particularly striking is the focus on six Bauhaus women with ties to Riga, whose artistic trajectories connect Latvian cultural history to the international story of modernism. Their contributions—often overlooked in traditional Bauhaus narratives—are brought together for the first time in a dedicated curatorial project featuring newly uncovered works, biographies, and archival materials.

Helga Isager’s own creative journey resonates strongly with these themes. Known for merging classic knitting techniques with a refined contemporary sensibility, Isager has been a leading figure in Nordic textile design for more than two decades. Her Bauhaus-inspired 1919 Collection, developed after extensive research into the works of Bauhaus artists, echoes the geometric clarity, colour theory, and experimental spirit emblematic of the school. She cites the textile designs of Gunta Stöltz, along with the woven works of Anni Albers and Otti Berger, as key inspirations—creating a powerful aesthetic dialogue between past and present. In Riga, these creative threads symbolically meet again.

During her stay in Latvia, Helga Isager will offer audiences a chance to explore this dialogue firsthand. On 10 December, she will give a public talk at the Goethe-Institut Riga, reflecting on her design process and the Bauhaus influences behind her work. This will be followed by a talk and workshop at the Ogre Central Library, and on 13 December, Zuzeum will host a special knitting workshop where participants will learn techniques such as jacquard, double knitting, and intarsia—methods that play a central role in Isager’s Bauhaus-inspired designs.