Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain

Anni Albers was a founding member of the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Her teachers and colleagues at the Bauhaus included Itten, Kandinsky and Klee, whose intellectual study of “primitive” art proved crucial both in raising the status of that art, and in establishing a pattern for the discussion of modern art. Albers’ own investigation of the techniques and abstract designs of ancient American weavers led her to argue that their skill was unsurpassed in the modern world, and to employ those techniques in her own work. Virginia Gardner Troy continues Albers’ story beyond the Nazi closure of the Bauhaus to her emigration to America and subsequent association with the Black Mountain College. Extensively illustrated, this book offers an insight into Anni Albers’ work and the history of the re-evaluation of ancient skills and techniques in weaving.