In our days, this era that strives for certainties and demands clear answers gives rise to ever more uncertainty and doubt: inexplicable phenomena, unpredictable and unaccountable events, ever-emerging and seemingly inevitable crises, and the fears awakened by journeys that urge or invite us to explore the unknown landscapes of the human soul – all these open before us the realms of mysterious intuitions, of the enigmatic, the mystical, the transcendent, the sacred. The life’s work of Ritta Hager, this six-decade-long oeuvre of textile art – whether by inner calling or in reflection of the challenges of the era, or perhaps by both – has, from the very beginning, been built in the spirit of sacredness and Christian faith. Her regular and irregular tapestries, as art historian Antal Kuklay describes, are “reflections of the modulations of a soul”. From the little girl — the daughter of a general – interned in Csorvás, in the Viharsarok region – “a bird tied to the end of a wire” – to the textile factory worker who, even under the pressure of the atheist dictatorship, remained a joyful wife, mother, and grandmother, she has journeyed into the spiritual worlds of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Teresa of Ávila, of Saint Dominic and Saint Margaret of the Árpád dynasty: per crucem ad lucem — through the cross to the light; from demonic chaos to divine order, from clamor to silence, through affliction to the peace of the soul. Thus is the human fate, woven into the cross of time and space, modulated into the order of grace and prayer, toward the complete and perfect possession of boundless life, toward eternal bliss – while at the same time planting signals for her brothers and sisters upon the “high-frequency carrier waves”. And to all who receive those signals, she offers help for that they “become children of God… those who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
The oeuvre is composed of commissioned works created for specific locations – compositions designed to harmonize with architectural spaces – as well as of “mobilizable” pieces conceived for exhibitions, which later found their way into major public and private collections. Among the most significant works of the artist’s career we may count the Mátyás Király (King Matthias) wall and spatial textile ensemble, completed in 1992 for the Mátyás Király Secondary School in Fonyód; the Sugárzó csend (Radiant Silence) tapestry, placed in 1994 in the Room of Silence at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where for over fifteen years it has welcomed those seeking deep meditation; and the altar pieces that, during the 1980s and 1990s, found their permanent homes in consecrated church and chapel interiors in Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands. Like these site-specific works that speak together with their architectural surroundings, Hager Ritta’s autonomous tapestry compositions are also defined by the simultaneous presence of tradition and renewal – by the equal and harmoniously balanced inspiration of classical ideals and experimental initiatives. This vision, this creative method makes Hager Ritta an artist of outstanding importance within that current of modern Hungarian textile art which Júlia Jankovich, in the title of her 2001 book, aptly described as “the reborn gobelin”. Using exclusively natural materials – flax, hemp, jute, wool, and silk – and processing yarns dyed by herself, Hager Ritta creates tapestries, or, in another designation, “individual gobelins”, that combine the techniques of weaving, twisting, and knotting. These compositions, produced by varying the thickness of the warp threads, are realized less often as flat wall hangings and more typically as textile reliefs: works that extend into space, attuned to layering, rustic protrusions, bundles, and the rhythmic order of spatial forms – to what poet Péter Vasadi beautifully described as “the undulation of hills and valleys born from the play of fingers”. In both her wall tapestries, woven with traditional gobelin techniques, and in her individual textile reliefs or spatial textiles emerging from the plane, created by her own methods, Hager Ritta typically employs sisal cord or hemp rope for the vertical warp threads, and jute, wool, flax, or hemp for the weft. Within a single work, she often combines gobelin weaving with twisting and knotting, allowing for a rich spectrum of effects and the unfolding of textile-sculptural expressiveness. She achieves the effect of the “plastic gobelin” through warp threads thickened in certain sections, which she raises from the surface using dark colours and old-gobelin weaving, thereby alluding to the hardships and afflictions of life; consolation and harmony, by contrast, are expressed through denser thin warps and evenly woven light-coloured threads. Alongside her monumental wall tapestries, she frequently creates miniature textiles as well.
Whether encompassing vast surfaces or confined to the size of a human palm, Hager’s tapestries rarely reveal concrete pictorial motifs: only occasionally does one discern the faint outline of a human figure, an angel, a gate, a key, a landscape, a cloud, a group of horsemen, or a precisely rendered symbol or sign. Júlia Jankovich has aptly summarized these works, observing that “…they are strikingly meditative in character. Hers is a singular aspiration within the art of tapestry: she neither depicts nor narrates, nor does she seek to evoke tangible, everyday experiences that can be expressed in words, or visual pleasures. Her aim is to awaken and invoke a particular spiritual and emotional state, and in doing so to set in motion a process of meditation. From that point on, the process continues within us, the viewers, and there is a chance that, detached from the immediate impact of the tapestry, it will go on living within us. Her artistic methods are deliberate and carefully considered, and her human faith – her conviction in the power of art – is so steadfast that the material itself becomes an instrument for the shaping of her intention.” The metaphorical imagery and abstract–transcendental medium of Hager Ritta’s works is light – light that pierces through darkness, filters through it, emerges from it, and suffuses the textile medium itself: the flashing source, the sharp ray, the forceful beam, the gentle radiance, the all-pervading flood. The light phenomena woven into these tapestries of mystery and secrecy are surrounded by a profoundly deep silence – the silence of reverence, of the soul, of meditation, of inner peace. The manifestations of light and silence, embodied and radiated by these abstract works, lead the viewer into the realm of the sacred. They invite one to immerse oneself in the richness of their painterly qualities, in their meditative rhythm and lyrical flow – which are by no means transcriptions of paintings into tapestry, but autonomous artistic phenomena, brought to life through the nature and material essence of the textile itself, expressed through its self-governing colour and form effects. In turning inward, in searching one’s inner world, they prompt the seeker to seek God. These tapestries – of magical sensitivity, intimacy, and delicacy; of subtle colour and form vibrations and mysterious transitions – encourage the contemplative viewer, exploring the depths of this artistic terrain, to rediscover and restore to their rightful place those values which our increasingly crisis-ridden era has rendered obsolete or dismissed as unnecessary: beauty, goodness, love, and peace.
[2012]