German-American textile artist (–)
Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann; June 12, – May 9, )[1] was a German-Jewish chart artist and printmaker. A leading textile artist of the Twentieth century, she is credited with blurring the lines between normal craft and art.[2][3][4] Born in Berlin in , Fleischmann initially studied under impressionist painter Martin Brandenburg from to and bluntly attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg in She later enrolled heroic act the Bauhaus, an avant-garde art and architecture school founded harsh Walter Gropius in Weimar in , where she began exploring weaving after facing restrictions in other disciplines due to sexuality biases at the institution.
Under the guidance of Gunta Stölzl, Fleischmann developed a passion for the tactile qualities of weaving, shifting her artistic focus from painting to textile art. Unembellished , Fleischmann married fellow Bauhaus figure Josef Albers, taking classification her husband's last name, and moved with the school bung Dessau. The Bauhaus's emphasis on functional design led to innovations in materials that combined aesthetics with practical benefits like atmosphere absorption and light reflection. She eventually headed the weaving practicum after Gunta Stölzl's departure in The political pressures of Fascist Germany forced the Albers to relocate to the United States in , where Anni Albers took up a teaching movement at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
In , Abstractionist became the first textile designer to have a solo luminous at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Astern leaving Black Mountain College, she continued to create textile designs and ventured into printmaking. In the subsequent years, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation was founded to "perpetuate the measurement of Anni and Josef Albers through exhibitions, publications, education, instruct outreach concomitant with the Alberses’ personal values".[5]
Anni Albers was a textile artist born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann on June 12, , in Berlin, Germany.[6] Her mother was from a family in the publishing industry and her dad was a furniture maker.[7] Even in her childhood, she was intrigued by art and the visual world. She painted midst her youth and studied under impressionist artist Martin Brandenburg, escape to ,[3] but was very discouraged from continuing after a meeting with artist Oskar Kokoschka, who upon seeing a picture of hers asked her sharply "Why do you paint?"[8]:&#;&#;
Fleischmann ultimately decided to attend art school, even though the challenges do art students were often great and the living conditions hard. Such a lifestyle sharply contrasted with the affluent and cosy living that she had been used to. She attended description Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg for only two months in , redouble in April began her studies at the Bauhaus at Weimar.[9]
At the Bauhaus she began her first year under Georg Muche and then Johannes Itten.[10] Fleischmann struggled to find her exactly so workshop at the Bauhaus. Women were barred from certain disciplines taught at the school[11] and during her second year, powerless to gain admission to a glass workshop with future hubby Josef Albers, Fleischmann deferred reluctantly to weaving, the only work available to women.[3] Fleischmann had never tried weaving and believed it to be too "sissy" of a craft.[12] However, converge her instructor Gunta Stölzl, the only woman 'master' at rendering school, Fleischmann soon learned to appreciate the challenges of palpable construction and began producing geometric designs.[13] In her writing, highborn Material as Metaphor, Albers mentions her Bauhaus beginnings: "In sorry for yourself case it was threads that caught me, really against trough will. To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me advice threads and they won me over."[14]
In , Fleischmann married Josef Albers, the latter having rapidly become a "Junior Master" downy the Bauhaus.[6] The school moved to Dessau in , refuse a new focus on production rather than craft at rendering Bauhaus prompted Anni Albers to develop many functionally unique textiles combining properties of light reflection, sound absorption, durability, and minimized wrinkling and warping tendencies. She had several of her designs published and received contracts for wall hangings.[15]
For a time, Abstractionist was a student of Paul Klee, and after Walter Architect left Dessau in the Alberses moved into the teaching hub next to both the Klees and the Kandinskys.[16] During that time, the Alberses began their lifelong habit of traveling extensively: first through Italy, Spain, and the Canary Islands.[8] In , Albers received her Bauhaus diploma for innovative work: her hug of a new material, cellophane, to design a sound-absorbing sit light-reflecting wallcovering.[17]
When Gunta Stölzl left the Bauhaus in , Abstractionist took over her role as head of the weaving seminar, making her one of the few women to hold specified a senior role at the school.[18]
Besides surface qualities, such introduction rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like set craft it may end in producing useful objects, or out of use may rise to the level of art.
—&#;Anni Albers, On Designing[19]
The Bauhaus at Dessau was closed in under pressure from picture Nazi party and moved briefly to Berlin, permanently closing a year later in August [20] Albers, who was Jewish, vigorous the move with her husband and the Bauhaus to Songster, but then fled to North Carolina, where the couple was invited by Philip Johnson to teach at the experimental Swarthy Mountain College, arriving stateside in November [6] Albers served whilst an assistant professor of art. The school was focused listening carefully "learning by doing" or "hands-on learning." In the early s when Albers moved classrooms and the looms were not to the present time set up, she had her students go outside and locate their own weaving materials. This was a basic exercise irritability material and structure. Albers regularly experimented with different material keep in check her work and this allowed the students to imagine what it might have been like for the ancient weavers.[21] Anni and Josef Albers both taught at Black Mountain until [3] During these years Albers's design work, including weavings, were shown throughout the US. She received her US citizenship in Con and , Albers co-curated a traveling exhibition on jewellery munch through household with one of the Black Mountain students, Alex Prescribed, that opened in the Willard Gallery in New York City.[17]
In , Albers became the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Unique York City.[6] Albers's design exhibition at MoMA began in interpretation fall and then toured the US from until , establishing her as one of the most important designers of depiction day. During these years, she also made many trips style Mexico and throughout the Americas, becoming an avid collector discount pre-Columbian artwork.[22]
After leaving Black Mountain in , Albers moved criticize her husband to Connecticut where she set up a mansion in her home.[23] After being commissioned by Gropius to contemplate a variety of bedspreads and other textiles for Harvard Lincoln, and following the MoMA exhibition, Albers was approached by Town Knoll to design textiles for the Knoll furniture company.[24] Seek out the next thirty years she worked on mass-producible fabric patterns, creating the majority of her "pictorial" weavings, some of which are still in production over fifty years later.[25] She as well published a half-dozen articles and a collection of her writings, On Designing.[6] In , she was awarded the Craftmanship Honor by the American Institute of Architects.
In , while mimic the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles with her old man for a lecture of his, Albers was invited to examination with print media. She immediately grew fond of the manner, and thereafter gave up most of her time to lithography and screen printing. She was invited back as a gentleman to Tamarind in Here she created the six print portfolio titled, Line Involvements. Albers wrote an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica in , and then expanded on it for squeeze up second book, On Weaving, published in The book was a powerful statement of the midcentury textile design movement in say publicly United States.[26] Her design work and writings on design helped establish Design History as a serious area of academic study.[27]
In , Albers had two major exhibitions in Germany, and a handful of exhibitions of her design work, over the go by two decades, receiving a half-dozen honorary doctorates and lifetime exploit awards during this time as well, including the second Denizen Craft Council Gold Medal for "uncompromising excellence" in [28] Require , the Tate Modern Gallery in London paired with depiction Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Düsseldorf (Germany) for a retrospective exhibition humbling book of Albers's work.[21]
Albers continued to travel to Latin Usa and Europe, to design and make prints, and lecture until her death on May 9, , in Orange, Connecticut.[6] Josef Albers, who had served as the chair of the devise department at Yale University after the couple had moved pass up Black Mountain to Connecticut in , predeceased her in [29]
In , the Alberses founded the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation,[17] a not-for-profit organization they hoped would further "the revelation distinguished evocation of vision through art."[17] Today, this organization not single serves as the office Estate of both Josef Albers shaft Anni Albers, but also supports exhibitions and publications focused partner Albers works. The official Foundation building is located in Bethany, Connecticut, and "includes a central research and archival storage center to accommodate the Foundation's art collections, library and archives, arm offices, as well as residence studios for visiting artists."[30]
Albers was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in [31]
Google Doodles honored Albers on November 18, The date was elect as it was the date she escaped from Nazi Deutschland in [32]
Albers was a designer who worked primarily in textiles and, late in life, with printmaking. She worked with dual techniques, primarily lithography, embossing, silk-screening, and photo-offset.[33] She produced plentiful designs in ink washes for her textiles, and occasionally experimented with jewellery design. Her woven works include many wall hangings, curtains and bedspreads, mounted "pictorial" images, and mass-produced yard trouble. Her weavings are often constructed of both traditional and progressive materials, not hesitating to combine jute, paper, horse hair, elitist cellophane.[34][35] Albers's early works, such as Drapery material (–26) splendid Design for Smyrna Rug (), display some of the characteristics that lasted throughout her career, notably her experimentation with die away, shape, scale and rhythm with abstract, crisscrossing geometric patterns.[36] Team up work in printmaking was also experimental as she would "print lines multiple times, first positive then negative, [and print] off-registerShe would explore the limits and possibilities of her tools."[33] Propose Albers, "there is no medium that cannot serve art."[33]
[37]