Anni Albers: Graphic Processes and Creative Thinking

Abstract

Anni Albers was a German designer, a great artist in the field of textile and graphic production, perhaps the most influential textile designer of the 20th century, whose research is based on well-structured skills in the disciplines of drawing and of theory of colour. The years of her professional experience in the environment of weaving saw her involved in continuous experimentation, in which her creative approach led her to consider fabrics as three-dimensional and material essays on the theme of colour and form. In her more mature years, Anni Albers had to give up working on the loom and spent the last years of her life exploring the world of printing and graphics, without losing the link with the tactility that had always distinguished her work. Her production is made up of lines (which are sometimes filaments and sometimes marks) that intertwine and overlap, generating fabrics and patterns of great visual interest. The graphic and geometric analysis of selected patterns reveals a working method and creative approach that is anything but random, but rather based on modular sequences and reiterations.