Designer of the Month: Anni Albers

Week 2: The Bauhaus (1922-1933)

Founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus brought together artists, architects, and designers in conversation about the nature of art in the age of technology.[1] As Harvey Green explains about the importance of the Bauhaus in his essay "The Promise and Peril of High Technology:"

Its premise was simple: The form of an object, or a building, derives from its function. Bauhaus designers rigorously avoided the use of applied ornament and attempted to give their objects a machine-made look, yet their creations were 'in reality craft products which through the use of geometrically clear basic shapes gave the appearance of industrial production.'[2]

Anni Albers, Design for Bedspread, 1928. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 12 13/16 x 10 3/16". © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Walter Gropius's original manifesto for the Bauhaus called for the building of a "new guild of craftsman without the class distinctions that rise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist."[3] The members of the Bauhaus, teacher and student alike, wanted to replace what they saw as outmoded values not by toppling the existing framework, but by forging connections and seeing their ways accepted and integrated.[4] Albers recalls that, once she was settled in, she "was deeply involved in the Bauhaus and thought there was no more interesting place on earth...There were things I didn't care for very much, but it was in my eyes the school at the time and the school for me"[5]

Anni Albers, Design for Theater Curtain, Oppeln, 1928. Gouache on paper, 4 1/2 x 13 7/8" (11.4 x 35.2 cm). Gift of the designer. © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Anni Albers' time at the Bauhaus was marked by experimentation - in the materials for weaving and in her designs for wall hangings and textiles - with her work exhibiting a strong sense of geometry, structure and pattern.[6] She was of the leading textile artists at a school where weaving was one of the most important activities, especially for a woman.[7] Stained glass, carpentry, wall painting, and metalwork, all of the workshops that Albers had hoped to participate in, were denied to her on the basis that the work was too strenuous.[8] While it's true that women were often denied access to some of the more "masculine" workshops, they did in fact allow for female students to attend classes.[9] In Albers' case, the real issue was Charot-Marie-Tooth disease, an incurable genetic illness that causes muscular atrophy, and which was discovered (although not until the 1980s) to be the real reason for her difficulty walking and occasional tremors.[10] This led Albers to the weaving workshop; although she had to operate the pedals on the looms, they did not require much muscle, and it allowed for her to work while seated.[11]

Anni Albers, Drapery Material, 1927. Cotton and rayon, 15.9 x 10.8 cm (6-1/4 x 4-1/4 inches). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer. Digital Image © 2003 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

After graduating from the Dessau Bauhaus in 1930, Albers because an instructor in textiles at the school and acting director of its weaving workshop.[12] As an instructor she "expected other people to make mistakes, and took pleasure in being the one who occasionally had an answer."[13] In both her wall hangings and the functional materials that she created, Albers was a pioneer.[14] Her work not only helped change the look of upholstery and drapery, but by hanging her weaving on the wall as art, she helped invent a new form of abstract art, in addition to her work teaching writing essays about weaving and design that would have a great impact on the textile design world.[15]

Anni Albers, Wall Hanging, 1926. Silk, 189.9 x 122 cm (72 x 48 inches). © 2003 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Association Fund.

In 1933, after the closing of the Bauhaus, Albers met our old friend, architect Philip Johnson (September's Designer of the Month), in Berlin.[16] It was Johnson who arranged for Anni and Josef to emigrate the United States, where they went to teach at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina.[17] And so, as you've probably noticed, all of the images from this week are from Albers' time at the Bauhaus. Next week, it's on to Black Mountain.

Anni Albers, Sound Absorbing and Light-reflecting Wall Covering Material, 1929. © 2003 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

[1] The Museum of Modern Art online, "Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity," http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/303 (accessed November 10, 2009).

[2] Harvey Green, "The Promise and Peril of High Technology," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 40.

[3] Nicholas Fox Weber, "Anni Albers," The Bauhaus Group (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 362.

[4] Ibid., 362.

[5] Ibid., 363.

[6] The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation online, “An Introduction,” http://www.albersfoundation.org/Albers.php?inc=Introduction (accessed November 4, 2009).

[7] Nicholas Fox Weber, "Anni Albers," The Bauhaus Group (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 342-3.

[8] Ibid., 355.

[9] Ibid., 356.

[10] Ibid., 356.

[11] Ibid., 356.

[12] Tara Leigh Tappert, "Artists and Advocates," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 227.

[13] Nicholas Fox Weber, "Anni Albers," The Bauhaus Group (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 363.

[14] Ibid., 357.

[15] Ibid., 357.

[16] Tara Leigh Tappert, "Artists and Advocates," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 227.

[17] Ibid., 227.