In the limitation the master shows itself, that is how you could summarize the main idea of Anni and Josef Albers in the Kunstmuseum in The Hague. This beautiful exhibition with some two hundred textile artworks, paintings, photographs and glass artworks is an ode to the innovation that lies in limitation and to the freedom from self-imposed rules.
The German-American Anni Albers (1899-1994) and Josef Albers (1888-1976) each spent their lives working on their own abstract oeuvre. They met in 1922 at the legendary Bauhaus art school in Weimar, married in 1925 and moved to the United States in 1933, after Hitler’s takeover of power. He first worked with glass and later with paint, she pioneered textile art, with forays into jewelery and graphics. What unites them is that they could make the most beautiful things with minimal resources. Josef spent most of his career doing just one thing: painting colorful squares. Anni elicited amazing works of art from the loom, an instrument that entailed a whole set of restrictions.
The Kunstmuseum regularly invites leading figures of abstract modern art, such as Kandinsky (2010), Mark Rothko (2014), and Mondrian (2022). This exhibition fits in with that, and again it does not. Anni and Josef Albers may have been pioneers of modern art, but they are not well-known crowd pullers. They are virtually unknown to the general public, this is the first exhibition of their work in the Netherlands. Just in time, you could say. Because their interests such as textile art, color theory, and the blurring of boundaries between art and craft are alive and kicking again in 2022.
Art couples appeal to the imagination and that can lead to a somewhat thin exhibition formula: lure visitors with a juicy love story. The Art Museum avoids that trap, art itself is central here. You immediately feel the kinship in the first room. Stained-glass windows by Josef hang on one wall, while textile designs by Anni hang on the other. Although the materials are different, they speak the same language: rhythmic blocks and beams dance towards each other from both sides. The ability to make beautiful things with few resources also shines from here. Because he had little money, Josef found his glass on the local rubbish dump, in one of the windows you can recognize the round bottoms of wine bottles.
In the US, Josef Albers focused obsessively on color; monomaniatically, he always made the same compositions in different, unmixed colors that he applied directly from the tube to wooden panels with a palette knife. This eventually led to the series Homage to the Square, which expanded to two thousand works between 1950 and 1976. Always the same three squares in each other, with different color combinations. For the proportions he used complicated mathematical formulas that you as a visitor do not have to know to feel the effect. Yellow that radiates from the canvas in combination with orange, sinks away next to gray. Colors, as you learn from Josef Albers, are actually just like people. Their personality changes with their company.
Initially, Anni did not opt for the loom herself. She wanted to paint, but this ‘highest art form’ was not accessible to women in the otherwise rather progressive Bauhaus. She was sent to the weaving workshop, a limitation that eventually led to great innovation. With her ‘pictorial weavings’ she changed the status of weaving art. They are not intended to be walked on or sat on, but only to be looked at. So you do, full of amazement and amazement about what you can do with simple threads. Depth, layering, rhythm and even emotion: these subtle and complex weaves have it all.
Weaving Valhalla
The move to the United States in 1933 marked the start of a long series of trips to Central and South America. Both were inspired by the recently discovered richness of indigenous cultures. Josef called Mexico the promised land of abstract art: ‘Because here it is thousands of years old. And still very much alive in folk art.’ He mainly drew inspiration from the bright colors and shapes of temples.
Anni would remain impressed all her life by the precolonial weaving traditions from Mexico and Peru, as far as she was concerned, the Valhalla of weaving. She was apprenticed to local weavers and studied old textile fragments. She did not see the development of weaving as a linear process, with techniques getting better and better over time. Contrary to the modernist idea of progress, she saw pre-Columbian textiles as the highest attainable, something she could only learn from.
Anni and Josef Albers
Visual arts
★★★★☆
Art Museum The Hague, until 15/1.