bavarikon4UDescription
The artist Anni Albers (1899-1994) first designed her textiles on paper. There are two designs for Wall Hanging No. 81, one is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the other in the Harvard Art Museum/Busch Reisinger Museum. In a finely graduated colour structure, horizontal stripes are arranged partly offset and alternate in different thicknesses and colours. It can be seen that Albers was inspired by Paul Klee (1879-1940), whom she counted among her great role models. Methods of rotation and colour change, however, also suggest influences from the compositional principles of Andean textile art. Anni Albers studied at the Bauhaus from 1922. In 1925, the same year that the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau, she married the Bauhaus artist and teacher Josef Albers (1888-1976). For the refurbishment of the textile workshop, its director Georg Muche (1895-1987) had purchased a Jacquard loom. Wall Hanging No. 81 is therefore not only one of the earliest weavings created by Albers in Dessau, but also one of her first works in this technique.