Bauhaus - Anni Albers

During this week's lecture, we had Rhiannon talking about the Bauhaus which I found really interesting as I never knew much about the art school. It was fascinating learning about all the artists who were involved with the Bauhaus and I have researched the one who intrigued me the most - Anni Albers.

Anni Albers, born in Berlin 1899, enrolled at the Bauhaus art school in 1922. The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 and it consisted of many different specialist workshops including sculpture, joinery, ceramics, printing and advertising, stage craft and many more. Anni Albers enrolled onto the weaving workshop. ​It was in fact here where she met Josef Albers who she married in 1925. Albers gained her diploma in weaving in 1930 and took over, from Gunta Stolzl, as head of the weaving workshop the following year.

Due to the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, Josef and Anni Albers emigrated to the United States where they were invited to teach at Black Mountain College, an experimental art school in North Carolina. There, they lead the art programme together until 1949. In the same year, Anni held a solo textiles exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Following a change in Josef Albers' teaching career, the pair moved to Connecticut in 1950. Anni Albers kept experimenting with hand-weaving through until the 1960s when she started introducing printmaking. Albers created mesmerising pieces, with roots of ancient and traditional textile techniques that she had learned from across the globe. Anni particularly took inspiration from objects and materials from which she felt had a communicative role within certain cultures. I really like the way in which all aspects of colour, composition, pattern, line and texture are expressed through her work and I really like the modern outlook it had especially at the time.