Lesley Jackson, curator of the exhibition ‘Bernat Klein – An Eye for Colour’, which is currently open at Heriot-Watt University in Galashiels, reflects on his career and achievements.

Legendary artist textile designer Bernat Klein is a name that many people will remember with great enthusiasm from the 1960s and 70s. A brilliant colourist and a visionary textile designer, Klein electrified the staid Borders tweed industry during the post-war era with his dazzling palette and rich textural weaves. His dynamic, paint-smeared abstract oil paintings provided the starting for his bold, colourful experiments in woven cloth. Textiles like these had never before been seen before - and have never been equalled since.

One of the most distinguished emigré designers in Britain during the post-war period, Bernat Klein was born in Yugoslavia in 1922 and educated in Czechoslovakia and Jerusalem, before arriving in the UK in 1945 to study textile technology at Leeds University. Based in the Borders since the 1950s, where he still lives today, Bernat Klein is now in his 80s, so a retrospective is long overdue. The exhibition, which has been funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, the Scottish Borders Leader + Programme, Scottish Borders Council and Heriot Watt University, will celebrate his achievements over five decades in both art and design, exploring the many different avenues of his diverse multi-faceted career.

Bernat Klein’s breakthrough as a designer came in the early 1960s when he developed a highly original range of wool and mohair fabrics in ravishing colours. “I dreamt of cloth vibrant with colour,” he said. “I wanted reds that were redder and blues that bluer than anything I had seen before.” Based in the textile-manufacturing town of Galashiels, where he ran his own mill, Klein became the toast of Paris when his gorgeous, dappled, brushed mohair tweeds and sumptuous velvet tweeds were championed by top French couturiers, including Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent.

‘Modern painters have strongly influenced our way of looking at colour,’ Klein wrote in his book Eye for Colour in 1965, ‘not only in general and in relation to works of art, but also in relation to our clothes and furnishings.’ As well as highlighting the relationship between Klein’s own paintings and textiles, the exhibition explores how other artists triggered his creative imagination, notably the French Impressionist painter Seurat. Fascinated by Seurat’s ground-breaking pointillist technique, Klein set out to translate this complex aesthetic into woven form. But instead of dots of paint, his fabrics were constructed from flecks of colour in apparently random – but carefully balanced – compositions.

Innovative yarns – works of art in themselves - provided the key to the success of Klein’s fabrics. The beautiful, subtle, mottled colouring of his mohair tweeds arose from a remarkable technique called space-dyeing, where hanks of yarn were dipped at intervals in different coloured dyes, morphing from one tone to another. Composite woollen yarns, spun from multi-coloured threads twisted together, injected further zest and spice. Thick slubby woollen yarns and artificially crinkled and looped yarns introduced other lively and varied relief textures. Novelty knitting yarns were also produced, along with simple and stylish knitting patterns designed by Margaret Klein (Bernat’s wife).

After conquering the catwalks, Bernat Klein disseminated his radical colour theories to a wider audience through his ready-to-wear women’s fashion collections during the 1970s and 80s. The whole collection was meticulously and masterfully colour-coordinated - or colour-balanced, as Klein himself described it. Needless to say, Klein designed all the fabrics, which included painterly tweeds for jackets and coats, light slubby woven woollens for trousers and skirts, and zingy printed polyester jersey fabrics for shirts and dresses. A selection of textured knitwears completed the range. Klein even developed his own Personal Colour Guides – charts based on an analysis of eye colour – to help his clients choose which colours suited them best.

As well as producing his own textile and fashion ranges, Bernat Klein was internationally renowned as a designer and colour consultant. His painterly approach was particularly appreciated in Scandinavia, where he worked with a number of firms in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. His scintillating collection of woven upholstery textiles for Margo Fabrics won a Design Council Award in 1968. Such was Klein’s reputation that in the late 1960s he was commissioned by the Department of Environment to design a series of Coordinated Colour Guides for furnishing schemes in government  buildings. The range, which included carpets, curtains and printed and woven upholstery fabrics – some plain, some patterned, some textured – was presented in ingeniously-designed sample books, intended for easy use by the layman, showing how different elements could be sympathetically combined. Klein’s adventurous interior decorating solutions provided a welcome injection of creative flair into the heart of the grey government machine.

Bernat Klein’s revolutionary colour theories are as relevant and inspiring today as they were in the 1960s. His textiles and paintings vividly evoke the exciting artistic era in which they were conceived, yet still look incredibly fresh and contemporary today. “I’ve always felt the need to look and to paint,” says Klein, “and to transfer what I saw into what was closest to me – textiles.” 

The exhibition was curated by Lesley Jackson on behalf of The Bernat Klein Trust.  An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition which first opened in October 2005 in the Hawick Museum. 

The exhibition is on at High Mill, School of Textiles and Design, Heriot Watt University, Galashiels, TD1 3HF tel: 0131 451 3218/ 01896 892133 from 18 April to 26 May 2006.  Opening hours Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm and Saturday 11am to 3pm.  Further venues and dates to be confirmed.