Design hero
As a retrospective of Anni Albers’ revolutionary textiles comes to the Tate, we celebrate her legacy
Despite the Bauhaus school’s progressive values – making design accessible to all and committing to equality – in 1922, the 23-yearold, Berlin-born student Anni Albers (1899–1994) was refused entry to its painting workshop because she was a woman. Instead, she was recommended to enrol in the school of textiles, deemed more appropriate. ‘My beginning was far from what I had hoped for,’ she has said of the time. ‘Fate put into my hands limp threads!’
Albers, undeterred, brought her painter’s mind to the loom, and strove to weave said limp threads into innovative, narrative works of art for the next 70 years. Abstract, geometric designs, they are loved by Bauhaus buffs and textile industry insiders, but lesser known by the public. Her artist-educator husband, Josef, creator of the legendary ‘square paintings’, usually takes the limelight.
Happily, this is set to change when the UK’S first solo retrospective of Albers’ work opens at Tate Modern (11 October–27 January 2019; tate.org.uk), in time for the Bauhaus school’s 100-year anniversary next year. The show’s curator, Ann Coxon, points out how modern creatives, from Lisbon artist Leonor Antunes and American sculptor Sarah Sze to British textile designers Eleanor Pritchard and Margo Selby, are producing pieces reflecting Albers’ influence.
Coinciding with the exhibition, London’s Alan Cristea Gallery is holding a show of Albers’ South America-inspired prints produced in her last 20 years (1 October–17 November). Plus, British fabric brand Christopher Farr is bringing more of her enduring patterns into our homes, with two new materials created using the designer’s terrazzo-esque prints, plus a rug available exclusively at Tate.
‘ When work is made with threads, it is considered craft, when it’s on paper, it is considered art,’ Albers once wrote. This winter, her own work – on show, on sale and on sofas – suggests that the boundaries she long fought against are finally beginning to blur.