BAUHAUS BELOW THE BORDER
From top left: Josefâs Mantic of 1940 marries a Constructivist interest
in two- and three-dimensional space to a new concern with colour; in
1939 Josef photographed Anni at the ceremonial site of Monte Albán
whose pyramids had been begun in 500 BC. It was still under excava-
tion; this cotton fragment from Nazca Peru ( 200 BC-AD 700 ) comes from
the collection of Mudec Milanâs new Museum of Cultures; so too does
this open terracotta bowl with concave base â also from Nazca Peru
THINK OF Josef Albersâs work and you will probably
see squares. Think of his wife Anniâs and it will be abstract
weavings. Together the Albersesâ art leads straight to the
Bauhaus. What you will very likely not think of is little clay
figures although as it happens you should.
In October 1933 with the Nazis in power the couple left
Berlin for Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was
Anni said âa vacuumâ â a word she meant nicely a place where
she and her husband could start their art again free from ex-
pectation or influence. Two years later they went on holiday
to Mexico by car: Josef scared of flying had learned to drive
especially. Back in the USA he wrote about the trip to his old
Bauhaus colleague Wassily Kandinsky. âMexicoâ he wrote in
amazement âis truly the promised land of abstract art.â
He might have been thinking of Modernist painters such
as Carlos Mérida say but he wasnât. What the couple had
found in Mexico was an abstraction far older and to their
minds more modern. Driving to an Aztec site they had been
stopped by a boy selling a turkey wrapped in a blanket. Anni
typically ignored the bird for the fabric. Then the boy took
some fragments from a bag â pre-Columbian pottery figures
maybe dating from the time of Christ. They were the kind of
object that had been made in their millions in Mexico and for
hundreds of years; things you could find buried in any field.
Josef and Anni were transfixed. Part of the Bauhaus pro-
ject had been to eliminate the ego in art the whole cult of r