was becoming sterile due to the strict academicism that dominated art schools. Moreover, critiques of the acceler- ated industrialization and decadence of modern Western society brought back Arcadian visions of a premodern utopia. The sense that art’s spirituality had been lost acti- vated a search within the material culture of civilizations outside of Europe; art historian Wilhelm Worringer and artist Vasily Kandinsky led the movement to identify such alternative sources of inspiration, resulting in a turn to examples of so-called “primitive” art. Needless to say, the primitivist discourse of early modernist circles that considered non-Western art uncultured was suffused by racism. One outcome, however, of this shift of attention was an increased appreciation for the ability that the art of other cultures had to represent the human connection to Fig. 27. Members of the Bauhaus weaving workshop, ca. 1928. Top row, left to right: nature and to channel the universal meanings and values Lisbeth Oestreicher, Gertrud Preiswerk, Léna Bergner, Grete Reichardt. Bottom row, left to right: Lotte Beese, Anni Albers, Ljuba Monastirsky, Rosa Berger, so vehemently sought by the European modernists. Albers Gunta Stölzl, Otti Berger, Kurt Wanke. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin belonged to a generation eager to 昀椀nd a new vocabulary for their modern society; this aspiration was central to the from 1924 (昀椀g. 28), exempli昀椀es this “quintessence of weav- 9 founding of the experimental art school of the Bauhaus ing” with its simple, single-weave structure. Firm, even, in 1919. and uniform, its warp and weft appear in equal measure By the time Albers enrolled in the Bauhaus in April and repeat the same effect on the front and back of the 7 1922, she already possessed an advanced knowledge of fabric. With this precept—weaving’s reticular interlacing ancient weavings and was probably pleased to 昀椀nd like- and all its creative potential—the artist found her own path- minded people among her teachers and fellow students way to abstraction and was able to convert the medium in Weimar. Peruvian textiles had been used as pedagog- into a successful model for the modern geometric style ical materials since the school’s inception and not only that came to de昀椀ne the interwar period. in the weaving workshop. Instructors Johannes Itten and Indeed, the principle of interlocking lines, alongside Paul Klee included them in their lessons on the principles the rich possibilities textiles offered for the design of linear of abstraction that were part of the preliminary course. and geometric patterns, reassured Albers in her artistic Klee’s exercises in color interaction, composing a picture endeavor, hand weaving. Paradoxically, ancient Andean with layers or bands of color like in a woven textile, taught textiles became her sources for a modern approach to the students the interwoven dynamics of the grid as the her work, helping her reconcile the modernist drive of the basis of a pictorial surface. In a parallel vein, the Bauhaus Bauhaus with the Arcadian impulses of her generation. weavers acknowledged the grid as the de昀椀ning structural The principles of the applied arts reform led by William matrix of the loom fabric (昀椀g. 27). Morris in the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts move - “One of the most ancient crafts,” Albers wrote later in ment continued to prevail in Germany when the Bauhaus life, “hand weaving is a method of forming a pliable plane opened, and textile designers still used preliminary drafts 8 of threads by interlacing them rectangularly.” With this (known as cartoons) to design their patterns. Albers, on sentence, she aligns the weaving technique with the grid, the contrary, advocated for structure to inform design and the modernist trope par excellence, and simultaneously turned away from practices that did not draw from “the 10 recognizes its ancient lineage within the textile medium. inherent over-and-under structural process of weaving.” A weaving, in its essence, is de昀椀ned by the intersection of The geometric patterns of Andean textiles re昀氀ected the one system of threads—the warp—with another—the weft— essential structure of weaving, key to their “directness of communication,”11 at right angles, so every weaving construction is a reticular and therefore resonated with her own search for a modern approach to the medium. “The fas network based on a grid structure. One of the 昀椀rst pieces - that Albers made while at the Bauhaus, a “Wallhanging” cination that the pre-conquest materials has for us today 28