Anni Albers
Anni Albers
Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann was born in Berlin on 12 June 1899 to a
middle class family. She was one of the leading innovators of the
twentieth-century modernist abstract art. She wanted to combine the ancient
craft of weaving with the language of modern art. She was among artists like Joseph Albers, Hinnerk Scheper,
Gorge Muche, Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Herbert Bayer
and Joot Schmidt who worked at the Bauhaus, where she was initially introduced
to hand-weaving. She began as a student there in 1922, when she met Josef
Albers. They married in 1925. In 1933, the couple emigrated to the United
States of America due to the forced closure of the Bauhaus by Nazi Germany.
Here they both became teachers at Black Mountain College in North
Carolina.
As an artist, designer, teacher
and writer she transformed the way weaving could be understood as a medium for
art, design and architecture. Throughout her artistic career, Albers explored
the possibilities of weaving as a modernist medium as well as one deeply rooted
in highly sophisticated and ancient textile traditions from around the world.
Albers also experimented with printmaking later on in her career, but continued
to explore textile related concerns such as pattern, line, knotting and
texture. Within her work, Albers would use wool, linen, cotton, experimental
media, screen print, photographic paper, paper and gouache. 
Anni Albers was a pioneer of textile art. She created abstract weaving that hung on wall like art. Albers thought of weaving as a way of slowing down and liked the way it was process-led where the fabrics would guide the design. In the Bauhaus, they used primary colours and primary shapes, but were interested in experimentation, so would look at everyday items in a new way and reinvent their purpose. Albers undertook weaving at the Bauhaus because she couldn’t go into any other workshop due to being a female. She enjoyed painting and fine art so decided that if she couldn’t use paint, she would use weave to paint with. Albers refused to accept she should do traditional textiles or be bound by sexism.