Anni Albers - Second Movement I
American born in Germany, 1899-1994
Second Movement I, 1978
Etching and aquatint, 28 x 28 inches
Edition 11/20
Tyler Graphics Ltd.
00.008

Gift of Judy and J.D. Williamson, II (BBA '67, MBA '68)

In her work at the Bauhaus in Germany between 1922 and 1933, Anni Albers became the first great textile artist to wed the concerns of twentieth-century art to the production of functional, everyday objects. In a remarkable synthesis of modernist abstraction and folk art traditions, she helped elevate the textile crafts to the status of fine arts. When Albers and her husband, the renowned painter Josef Albers, fled to the United States before World War II, they continued to espouse Bauhaus ideals through their teaching.

Anni Albers began to make prints in 1964. Between 1976 and 1978, she created three series of intaglio prints at the celebrated Tyler Graphics Workshop. In the three prints here from the last series, Second Movement, she employs repeated block forms that recall the precision and clarity of textile patterns. Although she establishes a predictable underlying system of rotation and reversal of elements, the final effect is an animated play of shimmering forms.