If you are famil­iar with color the­ory at all, you are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the work of Josef Albers. Dur­ing my foun­da­tion year at art school, we went through his book, Inter­ac­tion of Color, and I was really blown away by color relationships.

But, I digress. It is not Josef Albers I am here to talk about. For this week’s Time Travel Tues­day, I will be focus­ing on the work of Alber’s wife, Anni Albers.

Best known for her tex­tile work, Anni started her career as a painter, study­ing under an impres­sion­ist painter and later hav­ing an dis­cour­ag­ing meet­ing from artist Oskar Kokoschka, who asked her, “Why do you paint?” upon see­ing her work. Anni even­tu­ally made the deci­sion to attend art school, only attend­ing two months. She then made her way to Bauhaus in Weimar, Ger­many. There, women were barred from cer­tain dis­ci­plines, such as archi­tec­ture, and Anni reluc­tantly took up tex­tiles. She soon fell in love with the tac­tile chal­lenges that weav­ing pre­sented and empha­sis was on pro­duc­tion rather than craft. She exper­i­mented with tex­tiles that com­bined prop­er­ties of light reflec­tion, sound absorp­tion, dura­bil­ity, and min­i­mized wrin­kling and warp­ing tendencies.

I love the design of these tex­tiles, as well as Anni’s mate­ri­als — she incor­po­rated jute, paper, cel­lo­phane, among other mate­ri­als to cre­ate unique and unex­pected effects.

All images via The Josef and Anni Albers Foun­da­tion.