Hernmarck, Helena, 1941-....

Helena Hernmarck (1941- ) is a tapestry artist in Ridgefield, Conn. Matilda McQuaid is deputy curatorial director, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, N.Y.

Fiber artist.

Helena Hernmarck was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1941. She trained with Handarbetets vänner, the Friends of Textile Art Association, in 1958, and spent the next four years studying at the Konstfackskolan University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm. Following her graduation in 1963, Hernmarck moved to Montreal, Canada and began her professional career as a tapestry designer and weaver, creating wall hangings for corporations and government buildings. Influenced by the music and pop art of the 1960s she began to shift from her early abstract designs to more realistic images. Hernmarck moved to England in 1972, where she worked primarily on large-scale commissions for American corporations. In 1975, Hernmarck moved her business to New York City, where she established a studio in the loft apartment she shared with her husband, industrial designer Niels Diffrient, to whom she was married in 1976. Hernmarck has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde Museum in Stockholm. She has also received a number of awards, including the 1973 AIA Craftsmanship Medal, the 1998 Connecticut Commission on the Arts Governor's Art Award, and the Prins Eugen Medal in 1999.