Anni Albers

« Weaving is an old handicraft. Mechanisation did not change it substantially; it only alienated weavers from their material.”

These are the words of 25-year old Anneliese Fleischmann, who later becomes Anni Albers, written for a special issue of the magazine Junge Menschen – young people – in 1924. The issue is dedicated to the Bauhaus, and Fleischmann is asked to present the weaving department, then still in its infancy. Her text is probably the first publication on the theory of weaving and suggests that the design of a textile and its manufacturing have become alienated from each other. In mechanical-industrial weaving, the design is processed by a machine, and the creative brain is as distanced from the technology and the material as the machine and the machine operators are from the development of the design. Fleischmann argues that the different work processes should be brought closer together again, saying that understanding the material and the technology is fundamental to developing a textile.

This wall hanging is created in 1926; this, however, is a reproduction dating back to the 1960s. At this time, Albers asks her former Bauhaus colleague Gunta Stölzl to weave some of her designs from the Bauhaus era again, as the originals have been lost. You can also see the original design for this wall hanging in gouache on paper and including annotations by Albers. Her design concentrates on contrasts between dark and light and the interplay between horizontal and vertical structures. Blocks of black and white alternate with red as the composition skilfully weaves between repetition and variation. It is only when you look carefully that you see the complex structure. It appears to be random but is in fact very carefully structured.