Anni Albers

Anni Albers, born Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann in Berlin in 1899, was a textile designer, weaver, writer and printmaker. She met Josef Albers at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1922, married him in 1925 and, when the school closed under pressure from the Nazi regime, moved with him to the United States in 1933 to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

The couple settled in Connecticut in 1950, and from there Albers expanded her weaving into wallhangings, prints and design writing, arguing for fabrics as an art form in both their functional and expressive roles. Her book On Weaving, published in 1965, became a reference for generations of textile designers, and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut, now holds her archive and collection.