ANNI ALBERS

The path to the Bauhaus: Between painting and a new beginning

Anni Albers, born Anneliese Elsa Frieda Fleischmann in Berlin in 1899, began her training at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1922 at the age of 23. She had previously studied at the Hamburg School of Arts and Crafts and originally pursued the goal of becoming a painter.

At the Bauhaus, however, she was assigned to the preliminary course in the weaving workshop due to gender segregation. Weaving was not her first choice, but rather the result of structural limitations—yet it soon became her primary artistic medium.

From detour to vocation: weaving as an artistic language

After completing the preliminary course, Anni Albers began her training in the weaving workshop in 1923. Despite initial disappointment, she quickly developed exceptional creative and technical skills there. Working at the loom offered her stability, structure, and new means of expression during a phase of intense artistic experimentation at the early Bauhaus.

In 1930, she completed her studies with an innovative, sound-absorbing, and light-reflecting curtain made of cotton and cellophane, which was used in the Federal School in Bernau. In 1931, she took over the management of the weaving workshop—an exception for women at the Bauhaus.

Josef Albers, abstraction, and artistic development

During her time at the Bauhaus, Anni Albers met the artist and Bauhaus master Josef Albers, whom she married in 1925. Both were united by a lifelong exploration of abstraction. The works of Paul Klee in particular had a lasting influence on Anni Albers.

She consistently transferred principles of painting—color, rhythm, and composition—to the textile medium, thereby expanding the possibilities of weaving far beyond the realm of craftsmanship.

Emigration, international recognition, and lasting influence

After living in Dessau and Berlin, the Albers couple emigrated to the United States in 1933. Josef Albers took up a teaching position at Black Mountain College, where Anni also taught from 1939 onwards. At the same time, she worked as a textile artist, designer, and author.

In 1949, the couple settled in Connecticut. Anni Albers expanded her work to include drawing and printmaking, but remained closely connected to textile art. Travels to Mexico and South America had a lasting influence on her understanding of material, structure, and abstraction. In 1965, she published On Weaving, a fundamental theoretical work on the art of weaving.

Anni Albers is now considered one of the most important textile artists of the 20th century. In 1949, she was the first textile artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Until her death in 1994, she influenced modern art far beyond the medium of textiles.

Published on January 15, 2025 – Mathilde Busse

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