Biography
Astrid Furnival (b. Standal, Germany 1940) left East Germany with her grandmother in 1945, arriving in London, England in 1957. She met and married the artist John Furnival (1933-2020) in 1960. Astrid was self-taught as a mixed-media artist, specialising in fibre artworks made from her own natural, hand-dyed wool; she knits with wools that are coloured with dyes extracted from plants grown in her own garden.
She collaborated artistically with her husband from 1970 as well as other artists and poets, winning a South West Arts Association Award in England in 1978. From the 1970s to the 2000s Astrid’s work was exhibited throughout England and Europe. The exhibition Afts and Carts which she organised in the late 1980s continued to tour into the early 1990s. In 2018 the Arts Council of England awarded Astrid and John Furnival, a grant for a travelling exhibition touring England and Europe.
