Anni Albers

This textile from 1958 has the usual weave of warp and weft at right angles as its basic structure. Anni Albers uses cotton and linen as the basis, and these look beige and brown today. The fabric is a two-ply, with the lower layer consisting of black and white threads, as closer examination has shown. That leads us to suspect that the upper layer was originally also black and white, and not shades of brown as it appears today.

Albers uses horizontal strips to create the composition. The strips each consist of fifteen units. In every second horizontal strip, the warp yarns are twisted and some are wrapped around synthetic sticks. This is a technique called leno, gauze or cross weave. Leno is a pre-Columbian weaving technique used to produce a very fine yet strong textile.  Albers uses the technique to create an open structure with a mesh that is coarse yet nonetheless stable. Each of the 15 units in the horizontal structure is different. Sometimes only a few of the warp threads are twisted together, sometimes they are all twisted around the stick; sometimes the brown thread, which was previously black, is visible; sometimes it is the previously white and now beige. In 1939 Albers remarks:

“For as material alone gives reality to art, we will, in forming it, come to know those forces which are at work in any creation.”

The title of this piece, Variations on a Theme, is a reference to exactly this variety in structure. The connection with music and Johann Sebastian Bach in particular, whose work Albers regards very highly, is obvious, as is the link to Klee’s ideas of polyphony. In essence, a basic structure is repeated with variations. In Albers’ weaving, the variation is in the twisting around the sticks. As in much of her work, Anni Albers creates an absorbing, varied structure out of the interplay between differing materials and different weaving techniques.