DIANE ITTER
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Biography • Diane Itter (1946-1989)
Born in Summit, New Jersey, Diane Healy took up fiber as an undergraduate at Pittsburgh University at the suggestion of her teacher and future husband William Itter. Bill Itter received his BFA and MFA at Yale where he briefly studied textile construction with Anni Albers in 1963. The Itters married in 1968 and moved to Indiana University, Bloomington after Diane’s graduation in 1969. Diane earned her MFA in fibers there in 1974. The same year, she settled on her distinctive style of half-hitched hand knotting in brightly colored linen threads. With her material and approach settled, Itter focused on innovative imagery and created unlimited shades using a palette of 400 colors of dyed linen thread. She achieved the size of her works by piecing together small geometric components.
Many fiber artists of the 1960s and 1970s worked using natural coarse fibers which in the case of hand knotting resulted in large, sculptural works. Diane Itter distinguished herself by taking a different approach, knotting fine threads traditionally associated with loom-woven rather than hand-knotted fabrics. Early works included a series of miniature baskets in half-hitched knots (two are on view at The Museum of Arts and Design, New York). Itter framed her works flat under glass to indicate their pictorial importance rather than present them as three-dimensional objects. The bulges and depressions of the knots and threads act like impasto, accentuating the lines of the composition. She used thematic color fields like collage elements to create repeated and overlapping geometric arrangements.
Diane Itter referred to her work as “slow painting.” The design and the material form developed simultaneously, freeing the thread from the traditional figure-ground relationship of embroidery. Her technique of “painting with threads” made the color and structure totally integrated, allowing her to be both painter and sculptor, as she would say.
Itter began incorporating a fringe of thread in all her knotted pieces by 1976. She settled on this finishing touch because the fringe resembled a brushstroke and set the shape in motion, leading the eye to the central composition. It also reminds the viewer that the central object is made of fiber. The juxtaposition of loose threads and fine knotting invites the viewer to marvel at the meticulous labor to translate one from the other. There are about 400 knots per square inch in Itter’s work.
In 1979 Itter introduced the fan shape into her work and later a kimono shape. Itter readily acknowledged the influence of ethnic textiles in her work, finding inspiration from the patterns that surrounded her at home, which she filled with baskets, quilts, rugs, and antiques. Itter had a deep knowledge of textile history and many of her designs and titles are drawn from African, Amish, Japanese, Native American, and Peruvian traditions. Her husband donated their extensive collection of African ceramics, textiles, and baskets to the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University in 2018 (500 objects in total). Itter worked in a post-modern eclecticism, taking license to freely mix references from diverse cultures and historical periods, as seen in contemporary art now.
In 1980 Diane Itter had her first solo exhibition at the Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia and at the Heller Gallery, New York. She exhibited at both galleries frequently through the 1980s. Across the country she was asked to lecture on contemporary fiber art and historic textiles from Peru, Africa, Japan, and the American Southwest. In addition to teaching at Indiana University, she guest taught at Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and American Craft Council conferences. She received three National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1977, 1979, and 1984.
Diane Itter produced 25 to 30 pieces a year, each taking about one and a half weeks of 8-to-10-hour days. In 1979 she produced 40 works. In all she executed about 350 works in her career, cut short by cancer. Itter passed away in 1989 at age 43. Her Philadelphia dealer, Helen Drutt Gallery, held an exhibition of 35 artists to pay homage to her influence in 1991.
The American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Art and Design) held an exhibition of 70 works in 1995, which traveled to Indianapolis Museum of Art and Indiana University Art Museum in 1996. The tour was extended to the Textile Museum in Washington, DC. The exhibition catalogue by curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman remains the best resource on the artist and the source of much of the information for this biography.
Diane Itter’s work is in numerous museum collections, including: Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
Major Exhibitions
The Art Fabric: Mainstream, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, 1981
Pattern: An Exhibition of the Decorated Surface, American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, NY, 1982
Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, NY, 1986
Diane Itter: A Retrospective, American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, NY, 1995
Game Changers: Fiber Art Masters and Innovators, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, 2014
Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, 2014, then traveled to Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH and Des Moines Art Centre, IA
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985, MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, 2020 and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2021 (4 works included)