Weaving
- Artist: Lygia Pape
- Date: 1957
- Medium: Woodcut on paper
- Dimensions: support: 450 x 330 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Weaving” by Lygia Pape. Made in 1957, it’s a black‑ink woodcut on thin paper that shows the natural grain of the block—those subtle horizontal grooves give the paper an almost translucent feel. Pape layers simple rectangles and triangles, letting them overlap and intersect like threads in a loom. The title hints at that textile logic: the regularity of weaving, its transparency, and the precision you see in every shape.
What’s striking is how the organic woodgrain disrupts the otherwise pure geometry, adding a visual texture that feels almost like op‑art. It’s part of Pape’s Weavings series, created while she was involved with the Brazilian Grupo Frente, and foreshadows her later neo‑concretist explorations where the viewer’s eye is invited into the play of forms. The work feels both precise and alive, a quiet reminder that geometry can still breathe.
See it in person
Weaving is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
