Anni Albers: Material, Mind, and Meaning

An exhibition has just closed at Lower Belvedere, Vienna (August 16, 2026), which was previously presented at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (November 7, 2025-February 22, 2026). This unfortunately escaped our attention but deserves to be highlighted to readers since it presents interesting research into the work of and influences on Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers and has an English catalogue by publisher Hatje Cantz (ISBN 978-3-7757-6035-5).

Albers was not only a weaver, whose work examined the role and relationship of textiles and rugs in modern architecture through experimenting with form, new materials, and function, but she was also an important writer and thinker. The catalogue is a bespoke bridge between the exhibition, her work, and her writings. Her writing combined the intellectual approach of the Bauhaus with that of a practitioner, empowering her words with a resonance and vitality that makes her powerfully relevant to weavers, makers, and designers today.

This is well shown in this quotation from one of her first published essays, “Bauhausweberei”, in Walter Gropius’s magazine Junge Menschen—designed to act as a campaign document to build support for the school when she was unmarried and still Annelise Fleischmann: “ The catalogue contains a number of essays that focus on specific areas of Albers's work that have become the building blocks of her legacy.