Dina Barzel

Read Dina Barzel’s Illustrated Biographical Sketch

Explore Dina Barzel’s digital archives at the American Craft Council

I saw the sturdiness, the strength of everything surrounding me, as made of fine thread, wrapped, knotted, tied, as many times as needed to hold the world together: trees, nests, webs, myself. Dina Barzel, 2008 

Dina Barzel (1931–2019) used natural and synthetic fibers, clay, wood, and metal to make finely wrought and monumental sculptures, which she exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. 

Barzel was born and spent her childhood in a village in the Western Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. There, the traditional uses of fibers were an essential part of everyday life and of her upbringing. She learned the ways in which delicate strands of plant are spun into fine, strong thread and twisted into thick rope. Limp, fragile strands of wool when matted stood up by themselves. Pliant twigs made solid nests, walls, and wagons. Haystacks and grass rooftops were presences, each imbued with the mark of its maker. These were her first encounters with art. 

Having grown up in an observant Jewish household in Europe during and after World War II, she did not envision a life for herself as an artist. At sixteen, she became an accredited seamstress in Romania, and in 1950 she emigrated to Israel with her family and apprenticed as an architectural draftsperson. After receiving a B.A. in Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1957, she moved to the United States, married, and began working as a programmer on early mainframe computers at the University of Chicago. Of her time there, she wrote, “for the first time in my life, great art was within my reach. When I first saw ‘Leda,’ by Brancusi, I burst into tears. . . . The El Grecos, with their taller than life figures, kept me captive for days and days. . . . I would become an artist.” 

In the early 1960s she and her husband settled in the Pacific Northwest, whose landscape yielded the materials for her first forays into working with natural fibers and dyes. While raising a family in Seattle, she took evening classes in drawing and design, and after her third child was born, she went to art school. She began working intensively with fiber after seeing images of monumental fiber sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz and delicate, expressive ones by Lenore Tawney. Employing the skills she already had, using easily available materials, and working intuitively with no functional aim unlocked a door: “I knew what to do and how to do it and when I didn’t, I found someone to teach me and I learned fast. The work just poured out of me and I never stopped.” 

By 1970, she was working full time as an artist. In her early pieces, Barzel used traditional fibers and techniques to make large abstract forms. She fashioned her own version of a warp-weighted loom, and as her creative process evolved, the materials she worked with did as well. She incorporated wires, fiberglass, found objects, clay, handmade silk paper, and other materials whose capacity to be manipulated as fibers inspired the progress of her work. By the end of her career she was working with entirely different materials than she had been at the start. Lyn Lipetz, her first weaving teacher, observed, “She came to us to get technical ability to realize her images. Rather than starting as a beginner she was way ahead mentally” (Seattle Times, February 18, 1973). 

Barzel’s body of work includes freestanding sculptures and wall hangings ranging in size from less than a foot to nineteen feet high. Her work has been featured in one-person and group exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (1973); the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (1976); the Seattle Art Museum (1978); the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA (1991, 2012); the Greg Kucera Gallery (1996) and Francine Seders Gallery (2000, 2007, 2013) in Seattle; and the Berkeley Art Museum (2019). Her sculptures were included in “Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical” (1986–1988), the groundbreaking inaugural exhibition at the American Craft Museum in New York City, which traveled nationally, and in “Craft Today USA” (1989–1991), which traveled throughout Europe, opening  in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. 

Barzel’s sculptures are in permanent collections throughout the Pacific Northwest, including the Henry Gallery (University of Washington), the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, Swedish Hospital, and the Museum of Northwest Art; as well as the Racine Art Museum; the Berkeley Art Museum; the American Folk Art Museum (formerly the American Craft Museum), and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Her work is featured in the book Contemporary American Women Sculptors (1986) and is documented in the digital archives of the American Craft Council. Dina Barzel’s personal papers are housed at University of Washington Special Collections.