Anni Albers

Anni Albers creates this woven work shortly after the Second World War, in 1946. She calls it With Verticals. The piece is structured by dark vertical lines. They vary in length and are distributed across the entire surface. They seem to be moving outwards from the centre, where the longest line appears, towards the corners. No clear logic is discernible, yet in the overall composition Albers achieves a harmonious effect.

The verticals stand out clearly against the coloured ground, which is formed by the horizontal weft threads of red and gold. The vertical lines appear where the black fibres of the warp threads are exposed – in other words, where they are left out by the weft threads. On closer inspection, the diagonal structure of the coloured weft threads becomes visible, as do the gaps that reveal the black thread in the first place. Techniques of this kind, possible only in weaving, demonstrate how the artistic process in weaving differs from that in painting. Albers comments on this:

“The weaver must work from memory, while the painter constantly has his whole canvas and can add and take away.”

Such techniques, involving the deliberate exposure of threads, make the difference between the working processes of weaving and painting especially clear. 

With Verticals is probably one of Albers’s most important “pictorial weavings” – textile works created purely for their aesthetic effect. At the same time, it marks the last work of this kind in her oeuvre. The exhibition also features two screen prints with the same motif of vertical lines. These prints are part of a portfolio of nine screen prints that Albers produced in 1983. Each print is based on an important composition from one of her earlier creative phases, beginning in 1925.