Claire Zeisler (April 18, 1903 – September 30, 1991) was an American fiber artist who expanded the expressive qualities of knotted and braided threads, pioneering large-scale freestanding sculptures in this medium.

[1] Zeisler's non-functional structures were constructed using traditional weaving and avant-garde off the loom techniques such as square knotting, wrapping, and stitching.

[3] The resurgence of interest in fiber arts and macrame during the 2000s have inspired a new generation of knotters and creators, including Jim Olarte and Agnes Hansella.

In the 1930s she bought works by Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Picasso, and as well as tribal objects including African sculptures, tantric art, ancient Peruvian textiles and more than 300 American Indian baskets.

Zeisler became a celebrated innovator in fiber sculpture only after her inclusion in "Woven Forms," a seminal exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City in 1963 (Mar.

"[11] Zeisler perceived that knotting, although at the time used mostly in developing nations and by sailors, could free her from the geometric and two-dimensional limitations of the loom and would allow her to work in three dimensions.

[12] With this technique she made freestanding sculptures as much as 96 inches tall, often incorporating both tightly knotted sections and free falls of threads that have been likened to water and hair.

[13] Her well-known Red Preview, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been called "strikingly erotic in form, both phallic in its vertical thrust and labial in its organization.

"[14] She also worked in other forms and techniques, including large constructed balls of wool and wrapped spiral Slinky toys, and she covered stones with buttonhole-stitch threads to create relics resembling the tribal artifacts she collected.

Zeisler also experimented in the making of art objects in the 1970s, with works such as Pages (1976) and Chapters (1976) that used stacks of textiles such as cotton and wool fleece to form thick shapes.