

Anni Albers
Concurrent with a significant new exhibition at the gallery in New York, this online presentation offers a view of Anni Albers’s boundless world, through the artist’s unique designs, textile patterns, and works on paper.
In the words of Nicholas Fox Weber, Executive Director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, “Albers’s guiding principle was: aesthetics are not confined to a single area of life. At the same time as she put miracles of playfulness and intelligence on the walls, she did so in fabrics to hang as room dividers, in upholstery materials, in draperies, and in rugs that brought diversion and vitality to the floor. What she cherished in one arena she prized everywhere.”
This collection brings together works on paper from the Bauhaus pioneer, along with a range of new textiles and designs in limited edition color-ways produced in collaboration with British textile maker Christopher Farr, a longtime partner of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
Image: Anni Albers’s W/Co, 1974, featured alongside E Wallpaper (Dark blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter

“Neither the use for which an object is intended nor the material it is made of keeps an object from being art.” —Anni Albers, from her 1963 lecture, “On Weaving”
Anni Albers card weaving at Black Mountain College. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina

E Wallpaper (Dark blue), featured with Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Dark Blue) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
E Wallpaper (Dark blue), featured with Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Dark Blue) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Installation view, Anni Albers artwork pictured alongside E Wallpaper (Dark Blue) and chairs by Josef Albers. Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Installation view, Anni Albers artwork pictured alongside E Wallpaper (Dark Blue) and chairs by Josef Albers. Photograph by Max Burkhalter

E Wallpaper (Dark blue), featured with Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Dark Blue) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
E Wallpaper (Dark blue), featured with Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Dark Blue) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Albers’s revolutionary “pictorial weavings”—textiles designed expressly as art—were vastly influenced by Pre-Columbian art and textiles, which she studied and collected over the course of her many trips to Mexico in the 1930s and 40s. By 1949, Albers had become the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Her intricately patterned, complex compositions were built upon geometric motifs and minimal, reiterated elements across both her prints and textiles.
Installation view, Anni Albers: Textiles, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1949. Photo: Soichi Sunami. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York


Anni Albers’s wallhanging 'Camino Real' in the Lobby Bar at Camino Real Hotel, 1968. Photograph by Armando Salas Portugal. © 2019 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Anni Albers’s wallhanging 'Camino Real' in the Lobby Bar at Camino Real Hotel, 1968. Photograph by Armando Salas Portugal. © 2019 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This work is part of a series of screenprints titled Camino Real, which Albers created after the design for the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City. Triangles such as these became a dominant motif in Albers's work during this period, due in large part to the difficulty and lack of precision inherent to including triangular forms within the gridded structure of textiles. As Fox Weber describes, Albers's prints "were by no means transpositions for another medium; rather, they were celebrations of the possibilities of her new realm."

Anni Albers E Wallpaper (Red), featured in a Bauhaus reading room. Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Anni Albers E Wallpaper (Red), featured in a Bauhaus reading room. Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Anni Albers textiles pictured with related books. Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Anni Albers textiles pictured with related books. Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Pink) and (Red) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Red). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Textiles in E Heavy Linen (Pink) and (Red) and Triangulated Heavy Linen (Red). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
“Anni’s world, her materials, all juxtapose what is very solid and sure and steady with what is uncertain, mysterious, adventurous—results that never stop engaging us, that are independent of anything we have ever seen elsewhere, that immortalise the love of making that Anni Albers felt to the core.”
—Nicholas Fox Weber, Executive Director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

An installation view featuring artworks by Anni Albers, alongside E Wallpaper (Red). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
An installation view featuring artworks by Anni Albers, alongside E Wallpaper (Red). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
“For Anni, whose perpetual goal was to achieve what was 'universal and timeless'—among her favorite words, of the same high echelon as 'process'—each print was an effort to make art to achieve that aim.”
—Nicholas Fox Weber

Anni Albers's GR I, 1970, featured alongside E Wallpaper (Dark blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Anni Albers's GR I, 1970, featured alongside E Wallpaper (Dark blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
“Her constructions are full of variation, and have a subtle sense of balance that never yields a formula, and that provides continuous visual exercise and diversion.”
–Nicholas Fox Weber

Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Photograph by Max Burkhalter
MZ Wallace has partnered with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation on a limited-edition Metro Tote. All proceeds support Le Korsa foundation’s educational efforts for women in Senegal.
For more information or to purchase, click here.

These unique Anni Albers textiles and non-woven wallpapers are produced exclusively for this online viewing room in collaboration with Christopher Farr in association with The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation. For the past 10 years, Christopher Farr, Matthew Bourne, and Michal Silver have worked closely with Lucy Swift Weber at the Foundation to realize the vision of Josef and Anni Albers through handmade rugs, tapestries, fabrics and wallpapers.
The pattern for the Temple rug was developed for Anni Albers’s 1956 studies for the Ark hanging panels, produced for the Jewish Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas.
Albers based the original green, blue, and gold color scheme on the Temple Emanu-El's stained-glass windows, designed by Hungarian sculptor György Kepes.

Anni Albers
E Heavy Linen (Light Blue)
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2" / 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13" / 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping co


Anni Albers
Triangulated Heavy Linen (Red)
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2" / 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13" / 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping cost per 10 yard



Anni Albers
E Heavy Linen (Pink)
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2" / 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13" / 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping co

Anni Albers textiles pictured with pages from Anni Albers: Notebook 1960–1970. Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Anni Albers textiles pictured with pages from Anni Albers: Notebook 1960–1970. Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Anni Albers
E Heavy Linen (Dark Blue)
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2" / 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13"/ 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping cost per 10 yard

Anni Albers
Triangulated Heavy Linen (Blue)
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2"/ 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13"/ 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping cost per 10 yard

Photograph by Max Burkhalter
Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Anni Albers
E Heavy Linen (Red), 2019
100% Linen
Width 52.8" / 134 cm
Horizontal repeat 13.2" / 33.5 cm
Vertical repeat 13" / 32 cm
Category: Indoor Printed
Drop type: Straight Match
Upholstery: 25,000 rubs
Country of origin: England
Other: Please allow for 3% shrinkage when calculating required quantities
 
Shipping cost per 10 yard

E Wallpaper (Dark blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter
E Wallpaper (Dark blue). Photograph by Max Burkhalter

Learn More from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation