Anni Albers

In both versions of La Luz, from 1947 and 1958, which are also shown in the exhibition, Anni Albers already employs a cross form set against a coloured background. Compared with La Luz, she employs metallic thread very sparingly here – only along the upper and lower edges, where it frames the entire composition. The cross form is surrounded by alternating geometric fields of blue and yellow cotton. This design recalls Albers’s work from her Bauhaus years. The horizontal orientation of the broad cross and the wide coloured bands contrasts with the vertical lines of the fringes along the top and bottom edges. On her use of material, she notes:

“Materials give form to an idea. I am looking for permanence, both in material and in the form given to it.”

With works like these, her practice takes a new direction – away from functional textiles and towards more artistic creations. She later refers to them as “pictorial weavings”. She comments:

“I think of my wallhangings as an attempt to arrive at art, that is, giving the material used for their realization a sense beyond itself.”

With the title Sheep May Safely Graze, Albers alludes to a cantata by her favourite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach: “The Lively Hunt Is All My Heart’s Desire”. Also known as the “Hunting Cantata”, it is one of Bach’s secular compositions. The soprano aria “Sheep May Safely Graze” is its best-known section – a true earworm of classical music. Through the motif of grazing sheep, Albers establishes a spiritual connection to Psalm 23, which describes Jesus as the “good shepherd”.