Bauhaus powerhouse couple to star at the National Gallery

The National Gallery of Australia announces the first Australian exhibition dedicated to legendary figures of the Bauhaus art movement – Anni and Josef Albers.

An art world power couple, the Alberses were at the forefront of artistic innovation throughout the twentieth century and leading pioneers of modernism.

On display from 8 June to 22 September 2024, Anni and Josef Albers showcases how the Bauhaus art movement ignited artistic expression across Europe and set the foundation for the Alberses' ground-breaking work across weaving, painting and printmaking.

Guided by Josef’s explosive use of colour and Anni’s command of pattern making and weaving, the exhibition brings together 119 works by the artists and their contemporaries, sourced from the National Gallery’s collection and a number of generous lenders.

Key works featured in the exhibition include Anni Albers' Meander and Mountainous series and Josef’s Homage to the Square: On an Early Sky, Gray Instrumentation and White line Square series, alongside works by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Paul Klee, Gunta Stölzl and Lotte Stam-Beese.

Meeting in 1922 at the famous Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, Anni and Josef fell in love and married three years later. During their artistic careers, they influenced the process of artmaking and the use of colour, sharing this through their art and teachings.

National Gallery Director Dr Nick Mitzevich said, ‘The Alberses are iconic figures in the narrative of modernism, yet neither have been shown in a dedicated exhibition in Australia. It is exciting to have the opportunity to recognise Anni and Josef’s individual and combined contribution to art history in this exhibition at the National Gallery.’

Anni and Josef were two of the most persistent forces dedicated to implementing the Bauhaus vision. Rising tensions in Europe, along with Anni’s Jewish heritage, forced the couple to flee Germany for America in 1933 where they changed the course of art history.

In 1963, some 40 years after they met, the couple were introduced to up-and-coming printer Kenneth Tyler. Together Anni, Josef and Tyler bonded over innovative art practices, leading to a marriage of craftmanship, collaboration and accessible high-quality art.

National Gallery Kenneth E. Tyler Curator, International Prints and Drawings, Imogen Dixon-Smith said, ‘the works highlight an art form often overlooked, both historically and in a contemporary context.’

‘Anni and Josef shared radical new ideas related to the perception of colour, the organisation of form and the integration of art into life. While each artist sustained their own unique practice, they shared a commitment to the early modernist idea that art should no longer be concerned with representation. They stated that their art existed ‘to open eyes’ and insisted that art should be experiential and affecting, creating abstract works with a simple, powerful beauty. Together, Anni and Josef’s approaches and commitment to artistic practice formed an unparalleled union between two revolutionary artists’.

Anni and Josef Albers also features works by fellow Bauhaus students represented in the national collection.

Anni and Josef Albers is the first book to support an exhibition of the artists’ work in Australia. A series of original texts explore the influence of the Bauhaus on the long and significant careers of both artists and how their connection to the experimental school brought their work and ideas to Australia through collaboration with creatives including artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, architect Harry Seidler and master printer and philanthropist Kenneth Tyler.

The publication includes previously unpublished material from the Kenneth E Tyler archive, including images, studies and phone transcripts that demonstrate the close working relationship between the three collaborators. Exquisitely illustrated with works from the national collection that tease out the artists’ varied sources of inspiration, the publication captures the evolution of these innovative prints.

This publication has been produced with the support of key contributor and esteemed architect Penelope Seidler AM.

Anni and Josef Albers is free and on display at the National Gallery in Kamberri/Canberra from 8 Jun to 22 Sep 2024.

Anni and Josef Albers is a Kenneth E. Tyler Collection exhibition. The National Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Exhibition Patron Penelope Seidler AM.

Curator: Imogen Dixon-Smith, Kenneth E. Tyler Curator, International Prints and Drawings

ABOUT THE ARTIST: ANNI ALBERS

Born Annelise Fleischmann in Berlin in 1899, Anni Albers studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Art) in Hamburg, before enrolling at the Bauhaus in 1922. In 1925 she married fellow Bauhaus student Josef Albers. When the school was closed in 1933, the pair relocated to the United States and worked as teachers at Black Mountain College. Anni was a member of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus and drew inspiration from the Andean weavings of ancient Peru; after her arrival in the US, weavings gathered on annual trips to Mexico became a new source of inspiration. In 1965 Albers published the seminal On weaving (1965)..

Albers first collaborated with Kenneth Tyler at Gemini GEL in 1970. Albers used the base motif of a triangle in repetition to create an image of great structural power. In 1978, Albers worked at Tyler Graphics to create the series of six white embossed prints, Mountainous. The grid-like structure recalls a woven object, with line rather than thread employed to carry meaning.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: JOSEF ALBERS

Initially, Albers had been sceptical about using lithography; he believed the process could not match the luminosity that he achieved in his painting series Homage to the Square, which he had begun in 1950. Albers termed this series of paintings (which includes On an early sky of 1964) 'platters to serve color' - where colour combinations interact to effect different 'readings'. To achieve these effects with the series White Line Squares 1966 a perfect fine white line was created by leaving the white paper exposed without any bleeding of the inks. The series became the visual expression of Albers' thesis:

‘A white line within a color area instead of as a contour may present a newly discovered effect—when the line is placed within a so-called 'Middle' color, even when the color is very evenly applied, it will make the one color look like two different shades or tints of that color’.

When Albers was in his mid-80s, he produced with Tyler the series of colour screenprints, Gray Instrumentation I 1974 and Gray Instrumentation II 1975 in which all the inks were printed directly onto the white of the paper, without overlap, to achieve subtle hues and luminosity. Such an exercise required a perfect system of registration in screen printing, as well as perfect colour matching.

ABOUT THE BAUHAUS ART MOVEMENT

The Bauhaus was a brief but monumental modernist project. Over the course of 15 years, students and masters came together across Germany with the common goal of renewing artistic endeavour, rejecting the academies of the past to embrace a new spirit of cooperation.

ABOUT THE KENNETH E TYLER COLLECTION

The Kenneth E. Tyler Collection at the National Gallery of Australia is the world’s most comprehensive collection of prints produced by the master printmaker and publisher. It contains of over 7400 editioned prints, proofs, drawings, paper works, screens, multiples and illustrated books as well as an archive of photography, film, audio and workshop materials. This collection encompasses the work of North American artists over four decades and has been the source for an ongoing program of research, exhibitions and publications at the National Gallery.

KEY DATES
Media Preview:
6 Jun 2024, 11am RSVP now

Members Event:
Director’s Chat with Penelope Seidler

11 Jun 2024, 11 am
Ticketed.
National Gallery Members are invited to join Deputy Director, Adam Lindsay in conversation with Penelope Seidler AM, who is an active contributor to Australia's cultural life and with her Husband architect Harry Seidler the pair spent time with the Alberses while Harry studied under Josef.

IMAGES
available here

MEDIA ENQUIRIES
National Gallery media team
E media@nga.gov.au

CAPTIONS:
Portrait of Anni Albers sitting on white couch, 1973, photo by John T White. Gift of Kenneth Tyler, 2002, Kenneth E Tyler Collection archive, National Gallery of Australia

Josef Albers in his New Haven, Connecticut studio, 1969, photo by William Crutchfield

Gift of Kenneth Tyler, 2002, Kenneth E Tyler Collection archive, National Gallery of Australia