Anni Albers was a German Textile Designer, artist and teacher. She was born in Berlin and was the Wife of Josef Albers.
Education
1916-19, she studied under Martin Brandenburg in Berlin.
1919-20, Kunstgewerbeschule, Hamburg; and 1920-22, Bauhaus, Weimar and Dessau, under Georg Muche, Gunta Stölzl, and Paul Klee.
Biography
1922-29, she taught textile design at the Bauhaus, Weimar and Dessau.
In 1925 she married Josef Albers and was the first to experiment with weaving cellophane.
Between 1930-33, she worked independently in Dessau and Berlin.
She and her husband settled in the USA in 1933 and were an assistant professor of art at Black Mountain College, North Carolina.
Between 1933-49 was active as a freelance textile designer.
In 1949, she moved with her husband to New Haven, Connecticut.
She was active in both handweaving and machine production, her designs sometimes reflecting the geometry of her husband’s paintings.
She designed textiles for Knoll for more than 25 years, from 1959 to 1978, for Sunar.
Anni Albers writings
Anni Albers’ publications, particularly her bestsellers On Weaving (1965) and On Designing (1959) and her work as a designer and craftswoman, have had the most significant impact. In the postwar period, her craft weaving theories became the conceptual backbone of American fibre art philosophy. She believed that weaving needed to be based on a rigorous, comprehensive design concept for it to be relevant and artistically valuable. She singled out the thread as the fundamental building block from which the pattern should grow into a logical and harmonious whole. She instructed weavers not to put patterns on the fabric’s surface but instead allow their designs to emerge from the weaving process itself. “It is preferable for the substance to speak for itself than for us to speak for ourselves.”
Recognition
She received a 1961 gold medal for craftsmanship from the American Institute of Architects.
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.
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