Bauhaus Textiles

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 model for the discussion of modern abstract work. 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, Albers was able to build up a significant collection of ancient Perivian textile art and to establish an international reputation for her own textiles. Extensively illustrated, this book offers a fascinating insight into Anni Albers' work and the history of the re-evaluation of ancient skills and techniques in weaving.