The exhibition Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938 at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden presents the biographies of 19 female creatives who despite being, to varying degrees, prolific in the early decades of the 20th century, became increasingly invisible post-War; and in doing so not only helps them to regain their visibility, not only ensures their contribution to the development of art and design in the first decades of the 20th century is recorded, but also helps us develop a more realistic, probable, understanding of the (hi)story of art and design.

Staged in context of Against Invisibility the symposium A Woman’s Work provided a platform for a wider discussion, wider considerations, on the visibility of female designers, historic, contemporary and future.

A Woman's Work Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden

History is not only written by the winners, and re-written by those who can’t accept the facts of their defeat, but history is also the story of the visible, those who are invisible having nothing to contribute.

With the exhibition Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938 the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden not only re-introduce nineteen, largely, forgotten female creatives, and therefore allow their contributions’ to history to be recorded, but in doing so allow for new understandings of the development of design in the first decades of the 20th century, the (hi)story of the Werkstätten Hellerau, and also reflections on today’s contemporary furniture design industry.

Works by Lilli Vetter, as seen at Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938, Japanisches Palais Dresden