The story of Anni Albers and her contribution to generative art

Anni Albers was a formidable woman and an example of resilience. When she presented to the Hungarian artist Oskar Kokoschka a portrait she made of her mother, he abruptly responded, "why do you paint?"

This feedback could have destroyed many, but she had the strength to keep going and sent her application to the Bauhaus school.

The school declined her first application, but she did it a second time, and the Bauhaus school accepted her. But still, she would have to face new hardships.

Despite its idealistic nature, the Bauhaus school was not allowing female students in all its departments. Female artists were only allowed into bookbinding, pottery, and textiles. This is how she started with Gunta Stölzl's weaving workshop.

With Gunta Stölzl as her teacher, Anni Albers quickly picked up on the difficulties of tactile construction and started creating geometric shapes and designs.

In 1922 Anni met Josef Albers; they married in 1925 and spent their life together.

Drapery material and Design for Smyrna Rug, two of Albers's earliest works, show some of the traits that remained consistent throughout her career, particularly her experimenting with color, shape, scale, and rhythm with geometric patterns that are abstract and interlocking.

After the departure of Walter Gropius, Anni and Josef moved next to the Klees and Kandinskys. Anni started to teach at the Bauhaus in 1928.

In 1931, Anni became the head of the weaving workshop, part of the very few women with such a senior position at the school.

Anni Albers was the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at MoMA in 1949. From 1951 to 1953, she toured the US and was considered one of the top designers of her time.

After 1963, when her attention switched to printmaking, Anni Albers continued to study the relationships between colors, lines, shapes, and patterns.

She received many honorary doctorates and prestigious awards, including the second American Craft Council Gold Medal for "uncompromising excellence" in 1981

Anni Albers was the first western artist to sublimate modernism with weaving techniques. She also strongly influenced early computer generative art pioneers, and her influence today is ubiquitous.