Artemis (contemporary artist)

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Artemis (born 1947) is a contemporary artist and weaver.

Born in Saint Germain-en-Laye, a small town west of Paris, Artemis began her career as a composer and singer, recording an album of her own music and lyrics called Noel in the mid-1960s and Cahier in 1969.

In 1967, Artemis married the painter and sculptor Martin Frommelt, with whom she had three children, Sebastian (b. 1967), Eva (b. 1968), and Melanie (b. 1971) before divorcing in 1984.

Around this time, Artemis began to establish herself as a visual artist, setting up a studio in Vaduz, Liechtenstein in 1984. That same year she completed her first woven work, Song of Song, a series of five tapestries and collages (in the collection of the Liechtenstein Music School, Vaduz). She has subsequently produced more than seven series of woven tapestries and collages that use abstract forms and symbols to reinterpret ancient stories and themes. Her art explores the relationships between abstraction and narration, contemporary life and the ancient past.

In 1987 Artemis moved to the Greek island of Tinos. In her studio there, she works from drawings, sketches, and collages before weaving her compositions on a vertical loom. She weaves with a variety of materials such as wool, cotton, and silk, and works only during daylight. Artemis’s preoccupation with sunlight as an integral component of the artistic process has lead to her use of luminous viscose in her weavings. The results are compositions that seem to be infused with light, giving each tapestry a distinctly spiritual quality.

Artemis’s work has been shown throughout Europe, with solo exhibitions in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium; she has participated in group exhibitions in Germany, France, Poland, Greece, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Her first solo exhibition in the United States, “Odyssey” by Artemis, was held at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City, March 21-May 21, 2005. It featured a cycle of twelve tapestries created over ten years that together presented a unified reinterpretation of Homer’s epic tale of the journeys of Odysseus.