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).

Installation view "Anni Albers: Constructing Textiles", Lower Belvedere. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna

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.

Anni Albers, Study for a hooked rug, 1959. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Bildrecht, Vienna 2026

Anni Albers, Knot, 1947. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Bildrecht, Vienna 2026,. Anni Albers, Knot, 1947. Photo: Tim Nighswander / Imaging4Art ©

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.

“Parts and Wholes: Anni Albers and Architecture” by Glenn Adamson examines the persuasive way in which Albers made textiles an integral and important part of architectural practice rather than simply a late decorative addition. As succinctly put by Albers herself: “We hang our curtains from ceiling to floor in straight folds. Instead of decorative additaments they thus become an integral architectural element, a counterpart to solid walls.”

Anni Albers, Ark panels for Congregation B’nai Israel, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, 1962. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Bildrecht, Vienna 2026. Photo: Tim Nighswander / Imaging4Art

Several chapters republish some of Albers's most influential essays from her time at Black Mountain College in the USA, as well as influential later works. Of particular interest is a section about her rug designs, editions of which I am familiar with via Christopher Farr, and a chapter by Jeffrey Saletnik entitled “Anni Albers, East Asia, and the Practice of Attentive Passiveness”. In this chapter, her examination of East Asian art and thought is shown to be a lens through which she sought simplicity in practice, form, process, and indeed life.
For previous coverage in HALI on Albers’ work please see HALI 198