Anni Albers (1899-1994) led the weaving and textiles workshop at Black Mountain College from 1933-1949. She and her husband Josef were invited to the college in 1933 after the closure of the Bauhaus, where Josef was a professor and Anni a student, by the Nazis. Well into the 1940s, Black Mountain provided a welcoming refuge and a path forward for displaced Europeans who faced threats to their lives under Hitler and other fascist regimes, and for Americans of Japanese ancestry, like Ruth Asawa, who had been persecuted after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbour.
Albers brought with her the principles learned as a student at the Bauhaus, where she had been since 1922. Women at the Bauhaus were restricted to the weaving workshop, so having gone with the intention to study visual arts. However, Albers later recalled: “it was threads that caught me, really against my will. To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over.” She found herself forging a new path, that would fundamentally change the role of modern textiles in contemporary art.
Her workshop at Black Mountain centred on materiality, colour, and the study of pre-Columbian textiles. Combining the use of innovative materials, including synthetic as well as natural fibres, and in interest in colourful graphic designs, Albers’s work gained, and continues to gain, recognition, changing the definition of textiles from craft to fine art. As well as teaching, Albers created some of the furnishings at the college, and was an active member of the faculty, often more progressive and outspoken in meetings, and certainly more supportive to colleagues and students, than her husband.
This marks the final post in our #WomenOfBMC series. Huge thanks to Heather South, Lead Archivist at North Carolina Western Regional Archives for her knowledge, time and encouragement with sharing these stories and images.
We hope you’ve been as inspired as we have by these extraordinary women.
Look back over our #WomenOfBMC series to discover some of Black Mountain’s pioneering women.
Banner image: Anni Albers in the weaving workshop at Black Mountain College, Blue Ridge Campus, c. 1937. Photograph by Helen Post Modley. Courtesy Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina.