Anni Albers; Textile Artist, Last of Bauhaus Teachers

Anni Albers, 94, a major textile artist who studied and taught at Germany’s famous Bauhaus design school. The widow of abstract artist Josef Albers, she was the last surviving teacher of the Bauhaus. Mrs. Albers enrolled in the Weimar school three years after it opened in 1919, met her husband there, and taught there with him until the Nazis closed it in 1933. Moving to the United States, she taught art at Black Mountain College in North Carolina despite the fact that she initially spoke no English. In 1949, Mrs. Albers became the first weaver to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The museum owns the best collection of her textiles, which reflected abstract paintings in their geometric patterns and complex weaves enriched by knotting. She designed fabrics for Knoll International and rugs for Larsen Carpet. In the 1950s, she wrote two popular books on textile art, “On Weaving” and “On Designing.” In her later years, Mrs. Albers turned to printmaking, producing work for Tamarind Lithography Workshop, where she had studied in Los Angeles before it moved to Albuquerque, and for Gemini G.E.L. of Los Angeles. Her weavings have been exhibited at UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery and her prints at UC Riverside’s art gallery. On Monday in Orange, Conn.