Very few of us can resist being distracted by things. We need to learn to choose the simple and lasting instead of the new and individual; the objective and inclusive form in things in place of the extravagantly individualistic.
- Anni Albers in Designing, a 1943 typescript of her lecture given to a Weaving Workshop in North Carolina
“Choose the simple.” That phrase could well be the core idea of abstract textile artist, printmaker and designer Anni Albers’ life’s work. While some artist strive to create decadence and complexity in their work, Albers stuck to the simple. From her textile work like Pasture to her ever-famous printed pattern Éclat, her work remained minimal, but captivating.
She was known for creating patterns out of geometric forms, colors and material interplay, all while being deliberately absent from the work. It was about the art, not the artist. Despite her highly influential work in textiles and printmaking - and her pivotal role at Black Mountain College - Albers’ impact is often left off modern art histories. A part of art history that needs to be told.
Early Life
Anni Albers, born Annelise Frieda Fleischmann, was born in 1899 in Berlin, Germany. Her wealthy upbringing exposed her to various art forms from a young age. Although not much is known about Albers’ childhood, it shows a woman who had arts instilled in her starting at a young age.
She originally attended the School of Applied Arts, but soon set her sights on a newly opened home for blending the applied arts, the fine arts and architecture - the Bauhaus. Although she was originally rejected, her second attempt to enter the school was successful with the help of her husband, Josef Albers, whom she would marry in 1925.
At the Bauhaus, she joined a weaving workshop – a workshop heavily populated with women. Although Bauhaus “would allow women to enter any workshop,” it was often frowned upon at the school for women to be involved elsewhere. This workshop is where she fell in love with weaving.
Albers learned quickly under her mentor Gunta Stölz a variety of hand and industrial weaving methods to create cloth for furniture and houses - an ideal at the intersection of Bauhaus principles. Her work was quickly put out of exhibition and in journals. She was was now an artist.
During one of these exhibitions, she met Phillip Johnson, an American architect that quickly took a liking to the Albers. This connection paid off, as after the Bauhaus closed its doors to avoid sinking to the Nazi ideas of art, he offered the Albers jobs to be founders of the art department at a groundbreaking school he was opening - the Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
New Chapters at Black Mountain College
Anni Albers was Jewish, and she fled Nazi Germany for safety and to start a new beginning with her husband. Josef was Black Mountain’s first art teacher, and Anni started her own weaving studio. Black Mountain’s progressive approach to teaching allowed their teaching styles to flourish in ways that changed weaving forever.
And I find art is something that gives you something that you need for your life. Just as religion is something that you need even if you constantly find it denied today.
- Anni Albers in an oral history interview, 1968
Albers centered her teachings on the materials they were weaving with, an idea that flipped traditional approaches to weaving. She taught the students material and technique should drive the design, isntead of forcing a design on the material.
Albers saw beauty in these material constraints and frequently created what I would call “almost patterns” in her weavings. In Intersecting, for instance, the weavings of the line create what our brain can almost see as a pattern - but its not. These “almost patterns” keep the viewer engaged, looking at the design again and again for order that’s not there.
A Stone Age Craft
Albers strived to embrace the age of the craft. Weaving, as Albers notes, has been the same since the Stone Age. Rather than try and reinvent the craft, Albers embraced the traditional methods as she believed there was power in tradition. She introduced students to older looms—like the backstrap loom—not as relics, but as creative tools. Students weren’t copying old work, they were creating something new.
When working on looms like the Backstrap Loom, she encouraged students to let the material and their technique guide them. This allowed the all of the textiles produced to be unique. Albers was taking potential materialistic techniques and constraints, and flipping them to be what made the piece, not what prevented the piece. She showed generations of artists that strength can be found in every thread - it all depends where they look.
Individual career
Anni Albers wasn’t just a groundbreaking teacher, she was also making waves with her own art career. In 1945, she had two of her textiles hanging in the Museum of Modern Art. In 1949, she became the first textile artist and the first woman to have a solo show at the MoMA. She draped the MoMA in samples, yard materials, pictorial weavings and textile screens - redefining how the art world viewed textile work.
Throughout the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s her work was seen everywhere: traveling exhibitions, the Rockefeller Guest House in New York, Harvard University Graduate Center and dormitories, the Honolulu Academy of Art and more. By 1945, she even received the distinction of “well known” by the press, cementing her legacy as a creator, artist and creative in the public view.
In 1959, On Design a collection of Albers’s writing was published offering insight into her creative process. That same year, her famous Pictorial Weavings traveled to Harvard, Yale and other universities throughout the United States. At the end of 1959, she published her pivotal The Pliable Plane: Textiles in Architecture, a call for textiles to be integrated into the structure of the buildings, not a decorative afterthought was released. Her individual accomplishments, paired with her groundbreaking and innovative teachings, cemented her legacy, not only through her own work, but generations of artists she inspired.
The Power of Prints
In 1963, Josef Albers’ fellowship with Tamarind Lithography Workshop sparked a new passion in Anni - printmaking. In 1964, the couple returned to the Workshop, this time as fellows. While she was still immersed in the weaving world, finishing her seminal On Weaving in 1965, printmaking quickly became her new artistic outlet.
She may have created her last weaving in 1968, but her work as a printmaker quickly became just as iconic as her weaves. At every step of the printmaking process, she showed her design prowess. In 1972, she decided to produce prints at a new, commercial printing house. She didn’t just produce, however, she pushed the envelope for printmaking techniques and technology as she produced more of the most iconic works from her career.
Perhaps most famously, she combined screen printing with her commercial practices, creating her extraordinary PO I, PO II and WCU.
Éclat’s Era
Originally a weaving pattern that was too difficult to create, the pattern present on PO I and PO II is titled Éclat - French for “sparkle” or “glow.” The pattern stayed as a print due to the complexity of the pattern, although eventually technology caught up to Albers’ mind.
The charm of Éclat comes from the concept of the “almost pattern.” At so many different points in the piece, the viewer believes they know what’s next - only to be surprised again and again. Now the patterns can be seen on many architectural elements - a move Albers advocated for fifteen years before.
Her prints frequently used visual disruption - a deliberate trick to keep audiences viewing, an element that draws the viewer back. While prints don’t have the same structural limits as weaving, Albers allowed her pre-Columbian Latin American influences from her weaving to remain at the forefront of all her designs. Not only was her work ahead of her time, her creative approach is still something many artists strive to emulate - but there is - and always will be - only one Anni Albers.
A Lasting Legacy
Anni Albers’ way of thinking about art is something that may never be replicated. In weaving, her ideas of creating “pictorial weavings” - textiles meant to be art, not something to hold the space - changed how weaving was thought about within design and architecture. Material was once a constraint for weaving, Albers instead saw it as a guide. In her classes, she didn’t teach replicating history, but to let material make its own history.
She famously said, “Color should be third in weavings, behind texture and ‘yarn character.’” An approach that ushered in a new style of weaving processes, processes and thoughts that many still use today. For Albers, the weaving process didn’t have to have rigid rules - if the material didn’t allow structure, why force it? This way of thinking, along with her experimentation in techniques and her prolific writings and lectures cemented her as a pioneer of modern textile making.
Printmaking Legacy
Her mindset in weaving transcended the form as it carried over to her printmaking. Without physical limitations, she could let her mind for design wander. The product of these wanderings are some of the most entrancing works of a printmaker. Albers knew how to keep the audience looking, doing so by using the same principles of her weaving approach - focusing on pattern and color.
Not only were her works boundary pushing, but the way prints are commercially produced changed because of her experiments. She wasn’t afraid to take risks, and this lack of fear put her above the rest. From her work in printmaking we have patterns like Èclat which are still used today, showing her impact past the art world.
Albers will always be known for her weavings and prints, but Albers’ greatest tool was her mind and her ability to blur the line between traditional craft and art. Her work was revolutionary, yes, but her ability to pass this knowledge on to others transcends any individual accomplishment. Her legacy doesn’t end with her work, but instead lives on through the thousands she imparted her knowledge to. In everything Albers did, she chose simplicity. An in that deliberate, thoughtful and lasting choice her legacy will continue for generations to come.
