Martha Jungwirth’s Abstractions Animate AKRIS’s Spring 2026 Collection

“Painting, for me, is about tension,” Martha Jungwirth once said, describing its interaction with her preferred surface, paper. A “sensual” material, she said, “smooth or rough, its tactile quality often resembles skin.”

For more than 60 years, Jungwirth has refined this painterly interplay. Spontaneous smears and streams of color form her famous abstractions, evoking a body in motion. It’s no wonder fashion found its way to her studio.

The Swiss fashion AKRIS collaborated with the artist on its Spring 2026 collection. Jungwirth’s brushwork is evident in the kinetic flourishes: trailing ribbons, frayed threads, and dangling straps. It’s easy to imagine the metallic fringe foresting one standout gown trembling with each step.

“Seeing Martha’s colors for the first time, I was struck by their sheer audacity,” AKRIS creative director Albert Kriemler said in a statement. “Her paintings never give themselves away at once. You have to keep looking. Emotion and experience, recorded in paint”—Gefühlsfarben, as Jungwirth calls them.

The wardrobe, we’re to think, is a walking iteration of her oeuvre, or, in her words, “a seismographic diary.” The daubs of pink, red, and violet punctuating a sandy-colored suit were surely inspired by her “Istanbul” series, from 2016. The noble steed of Bukephalos (2021)—which featured in her 2024 Guggenheim Bilbao retrospective—charged down the runway, too. The delicate embroidery, however, honors a design by Kriemler’s grandmother in Alice from the 1950s, he said.

“This collection looks at getting dressed as an intuitive act,” he added. “Not only how we want to appear, but what we carry within: instinct, habit, desire, memory, fantasy.”