Starcke, Dagmar

Dagmar Margrethe Kristine Starcke (née Kaae) was a Danish painter, illustrator and textile artist. She was trained as a painter, but is mostly remembered today for her collages and tapestries. Apart from her work with textile, sometimes she used different techniques, like brick mosaics. She built up her images with a fine sense of the nature of the textile materials in relation to the shape and color, so that each piece of cloth became an important and necessary piece in the overall composition. The images are simple and easy to understand and at the same time refined and artistically expressive. The motifs were often inspired by the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, but also biblical scenes and allegories.

Her work had a kinship with older European painting, Italian and Dutch before the Renaissance, but there was also a social aspect: it was made of simple, cheap materials, and a lot of work was done for institutions, social housing, so that many could enjoy seeing them. She was associated with the Danish Handcraft Guild, where she gave courses on textile art.