Anni Albers

With her forward-thinking and experimental approach to weaving, Albers managed to change the view of weaving as a craft discipline, and instead developed it as a modern medium across art, design and architecture.

She gained increasing recognition for her redemption of the Bauhaus movement's radical vision of the fusion of art and life, which meant that in 1949 she was the first textile designer to be allowed to exhibit solo at MoMA in New York. Her sensuous textile works explore weaving's multifaceted potential for imagery, linguistics and architectural functionality.

In general, many of Albers’ works move between the functional and the abstract.

A strange bag woven together with another bag like a kind of fused twin - necklaces of hairpins, screws and large patterned weaves that can simultaneously act as curtains or blinds.

We spend most of our lives in close contact with textiles; clothes, bedding, tents, towels.
Textiles protect us from the wind and rain, keep us warm, and are also a way of speaking our narrative. The weaving as media and material seems particularly well suited to fulfill the Bauhaus movement's promises to merge art and life.

Anni Albers

The Bauhaus movement's leading textile artist

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Anni Albers (1899-1994) arrived at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany in 1922, but was limited in the coursework she could pursue as certain disciplines were not taught to women.

Anni Albers originally wanted to be a painter, but it was at the loom where she found artistic freedom.

Photo: MutualArt K20, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany

Anni Albers used the weave in her work as a visual artist. In her book ‘On Weaving’ (1965) she writes about being fascinated by the loom itself. It looks like a small organ or
harpsichord, obviously systematic, but with a mechanism that looks incredibly complicated.

As a weaver, you often sit inside the machine and work, surrounded by it.

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

She was inspired by Peruvian weaving traditions and German mathematical knot theory in her studies of the possibilities of working with the tissue's embedded grid structure and the different textures of the threads in an artistic form language.

Albers worked with the material - and with the machine - to explore what they both could offer as an instrument for a visual artist, just as an instrumentalist works with the sound of his instrument.

Photo: Soichi Sunami / Photographic Archive of Moma, New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In general, many of Albers’ works move between the functional and the abstract.

A strange bag woven together with another bag like a kind of fused twin - necklaces of hairpins, screws and large patterned weaves that can simultaneously act as curtains or blinds.

Anni Albers

Anni Albers

The Bauhaus movement's leading textile artist

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Anni Albers (1899-1994) arrived at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany in 1922, but was limited in the coursework she could pursue as certain disciplines were not taught to women.

Anni Albers originally wanted to be a painter, but it was at the loom where she found artistic freedom.

Photo: MutualArt K20, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany

Anni Albers used the weave in her work as a visual artist. In her book ‘On Weaving’ (1965) she writes about being fascinated by the loom itself. It looks like a small organ or harpsichord, obviously systematic, but with a mechanism that looks incredibly complicated.

As a weaver, you often sit inside the machine and work, surrounded by it.

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

She was inspired by Peruvian weaving traditions and German mathematical knot theory in her studies of the possibilities of working with the tissue's embedded grid structure and the different textures of the threads in an artistic form language.

Albers worked with the material - and with the machine - to explore what they both could offer as an instrument for a visual artist, just as an instrumentalist works with the sound of his instrument.

Photo: Soichi Sunami / Photographic Archive of Moma, New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In general, many of Albers’ works move between the functional and the abstract.

A strange bag woven together with another bag like a kind of fused twin - necklaces of hairpins, screws and large patterned weaves that can simultaneously act as curtains or blinds.

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Anni Albers used the weave in her work as a visual artist. In her book ‘On Weaving’ (1965) she writes about being fascinated by the loom itself. It looks like a small organ or
harpsichord, obviously systematic, but with a mechanism that looks incredibly complicated.