TEXTILES.ORG
The Bauhaus was an art school founded in Germany in 1919 with a vision to reunite fine art and functional design in an increasingly industrialized world. Many female artists who attended the school were disappointed to find that the options available to them were the weaving shed and ceramics studio. However, many of these artists fine-tuned the craft of weaving and created innovative, seminal textiles that are still relevant today.
Two such artists were Gunta Stölzl, who was the only woman to teach at the Bauhaus, and student Anni Albers. Now, some of their textiles have been turned into fabric by New York-based Designtex in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus movement.
Called the Bauhaus Project, the idea began when Susan Lyons, Designtex president, wanted to make the artists’ work available for use today. She got permission from Stölzl’s daughter Monika Stadler, who lives in the Netherlands, and Lucy Swift Weber, who is part of the Albers Foundation.
The Bauhaus Project consists of eight upholstery textiles and eight digitally printed wall coverings based on the designs of Albers and Stölzl. Designtex studied geometric plans made by the artists, noting the intricacy of the patterns and the colors used, to recreate the designs.
Stölzl used color subtly on geometric patterns with asymmetric details. The Designtex designers mapped out her complex weave constructions to recreate five of her woven textile patterns.
Among Albers’s reinvented textiles were her geometric black designs from 1926 and 1927 for digitally printed wall coverings. For more information, visit www.designtex.com.