Embracing the Grid Iria Candela and Joanne Pillsbury Weaving Abstraction brings together two extraordinary of thread—that became the structural matrix not only of bodies of work separated in time by at least 昀椀ve hundred the geometric designs but of the predominant orthogonal 1 years: the weavings of ancient Andean artists whose iconography of Andean arts.” names are unknown to us and the 昀椀ber works of four Textiles were also fundamental to the exchange of infor- modern artists, Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, mation in the pre-Hispanic period in the Andes, as recent and Olga de Amaral. This juxtaposition offers valuable research on systems of communication in the region insights into the emergence of abstract imagery via, it has underscored. The absence of writing in the ancient would seem, a shared awareness of the integral connec- Andes has limited speci昀椀c interpretations of the imagery tion between structure and design in the textile medium. on works made hundreds and thousands of years before The constructive nature of textiles, arising from the grid the Spanish colonialist venture in 1532. Yet the absence of formed by crossing the warp and the weft, the vertical and what we consider an essential form of communication— horizontal elements of the loom, is a springboard for the writing—points to the outsized role that textiles played in formal investigation of geometric designs. While Albers, conveying ideas and information. Never passive, merely Hicks, Tawney, and De Amaral were profoundly in昀氀uenced decorative elements, textiles were used to swiftly transmit by, and deeply invested in, studying the Andean legacy, it social and political messages in a manner that overcame is not our intention to dissect how these modern artists linguistic and geographic barriers. appropriated this tradition. Rather, we want to examine Large-scale archaeological excavations on the coast how artists from such distant societies mined the rich vein of Peru in the early twentieth century led to an increased of textile structures to produce works of art of exceptional awareness in Europe and the United States of the techni- technical and formal re昀椀nement. cal sophistication and dazzling compositions of ancient Weaving is one of the oldest and most complex art Andean textiles. The expanding public collections of forms from the Andes, extending thousands of years these works, and the publications related to them, in turn, before the rise of the Inca Empire (1470–1532) and boast- attracted the interest of Expressionist and Bauhaus artists ing one of the most diverse approaches to textile con- alike, including a young Anni Albers. In these artworks, struction known globally. Drawing on a wide repertoire European and American artists saw a model, a new way of geometric and 昀椀gurative designs, weavers developed of thinking that connected with their efforts to develop a strikingly bold iconographies and powerful abstract com- language for modern art. positions for textiles intended, among other things, for use Modern practitioners starting with Albers and including as everyday objects, royal gifts, and wrappings for sacred 昀椀ber artists of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Hicks, Tawney, offerings. The importance of these designs is further evi - and De Amaral, recognized an alternative path to abstrac- dent in their reproduction in other media. As contemporary tion within the modernist quest for a universal language and artist César Paternosto explained in his 1996 book The made it their aim to situate textiles at the core of the mod- Stone and the Thread, “it was weaving—the manipulation ern project, regaining a central space for them in society. 4