Taking design to new heights
In September 2023, Trapholt – Museum of Modern Art and Design opened the most extensive exhibition on Nanna Ditzel ever staged. Earlier that spring, a sneak peek of the exhibition was showcased at Fredericia's Copenhagen Showroom.
Nanna Ditzel (1923-2005) is the greatest female Danish designer of the twentieth century. For the first time, Trapholt fully unfolded Nanna Ditzel’s world of inspirations and ideas in September 2023, presenting her complete oeuvre in a richly sensuous context of furniture design, textiles, jewelry, and immersive installations. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Nanna Ditzel’s birth, it was the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date. It told how one can evolve and realize their potential by staying in touch with the inspiration offered by art, culture, nature, and everyday life. Nanna Ditzel combined an insistence on solid craftsmanship with artistic and cultural inspiration, creating unique and universal design icons. Experiencing Ditzel’s design and sensing the connection between craftsmanship and inspiration reveals that genuine innovation does not arise from mindlessly repeating the known but from letting curiosity and inspiration fuel you, drawing on diverse and surprising sources to challenge the status quo.
Nanna Ditzel works with and around the entire body – she bejewels it, covers it with textiles and showcases it in her furniture designs. In particular, she taps into our contemporary world with competencies that point to 21st Century Skills. With creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration, reflection and media awareness, her work can exemplify and personify society’s future learning and construction. For Nanna Ditzel, inspiration is decisive in how it unfolds due to a multitude of thoughts and experiences among people or alone in nature. She observes life, people, shapes, colours, weather, and everything around her. She works neither with routine nor something that has been done, said, or occurred. And from these efforts, analyses and thoughts, something surprising and unexpected often emerges. Critical thinking ensures new, sustainable ideas to create a picture of life. A life rich in content and experiences, an innovative life.
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Dive into our universe of stories about Nanna Ditzel's life, her designs and the people who knew her.
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