In 1984, textile designer and printmaker Anni Albers published Connections—a set of nine silkscreens that evoke pivotal moments in her prolific career, by then spanning nearly six decades. Reflecting on her life as a designer, she chose motifs for the prints based on her work from particular years: two from the 1920s, when Albers was at the Bauhaus and met her life-long partner and later husband Josef; two from the 1940s, when the couple taught at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina after having fled Nazi Germany; three from the late 1950s to the early ‘70s, after they resettled in Orange, Connecticut and Josef served as Yale University’s Chair of the Department of Design; and two from the early 1980s, after Josef’s death. This exhibition pairs the Davis Museum’s exquisite example of this silkscreen portfolio—an acquisition made in the past year—with Albers’ work from each era, tracing the development of her patterns from sketches on graph paper to gouache maquettes. Preparatory works on paper are paired with fabric swatches and remnants manufactured by commercial textile producers, such as Knoll where her designs can be purchased to this day.

 

Generously supported by Wellesley College Friends of Art at the Davis.

Image © 2016 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

Tuesday, November 15, 2016 | 4:00pm | Davis Galleries

 

Exhibition curator Claire Whitner will discuss Anni Albers’s autobiographical silkscreen series Connections in relation to her career as a designer from the Bauhaus to her late work from the 1980s.