Anni Albers: Notebook 1970-1980

Description

A superb facsimile of the only known notebook of legendary artist Anni Albers, this publication offers insight into the methodology of a modern master. Beginning in 1972, Anni Albers filled her graph-paper notebook regularly until 1980. This rare and previously unpublished document of her working process contains intricate drawings for her large body of graphic work, as well as studies for her late knot drawings. The notebook follows Albers's deliberations and progression as a draftsman in their original form. It reveals the way she went about making complex patterns, exploring them piece by piece, line by line in a visually dramatic and mysteriously beautiful series of geometric arrangements. An afterword by Brenda Danilowitz, Chief Curator of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, contextualizes the notebook and explores the role studies played in the development of her work.

Anni Albers (1899-1994) was a textile artist, designer, printmaker, and educator known for her pioneering graphic wall hangings, weavings, and designs. She was born in Berlin, and studied painting under German Impressionist Martin Brandenburg from 1916 to 1919. After attending the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg for two months in 1920, she enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1922 and joined the faculty in 1929. At Black Mountain College from 1933 to 1949 she elaborated on the technical innovations she devised at the Bauhaus, developing a specialized curriculum that integrated weaving and industrial design. In 1949 she became the first designer to have a one-person show at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the exhibition Anni Albers: Textiles subsequently traveled to 26 venues throughout the United States and Canada. Her seminal book On Weaving, published in 1965, helped to establish design studies as an area of academic and aesthetic inquiry and solidified her status as the single most influential textile artist of the twentieth century. Brenda Danilowitz is an art historian and chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. She is the author and editor of numerous books and essays on the work of Josef and Anni Albers and has organized exhibitions of their work in the US, Europe, Mexico, and Latin America. She has also published essays and articles on twentieth century Southern African art and artists including photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee and printmakers John Muafangejo and Azaria Mbatha.

"Filled with drawings of knots, curving lines and intricate patterns built with triangles."--Carol Kino "Wall Street Journal" "Enigmatic and spare, these sketches underline the philosophy behind another Albers pronouncement: 'Learning to form makes us understand all forming.'"--Andrew Dickson "The New York Review of Books" "It's in this sense of play, in experimentation between and within different sketches in the Notebook, that these deceptively simple drawings begin to come alive, with a gradually building, almost psychedelic intensity."--Felix Bazalgette "Elephant" "The drawings feel tentative, but these repetitive studies in line and pattern also show the meticulous attention Albers honed as a master weaver."--Lisa Darms "BOOKFORUM"