From top left: the Alberses also found Mesoamerican art nearer to home
- the Navajo rugs in Josefâs photo-collage of 1938 were in Florida; this
wool fragment from Wari Culture AD 500 - 1000 is from the collection
of Mudec; this c1967 study is for a large weaving Anni made for the
Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City designed by the Modernist architect
Ricardo Legorreta; Josefâs painting Movement in Grey ( 1939 ) suggests
why he later balked at his abstraction being described as âhard-edgedâ
originality. In a time of mechanical reproduction and the aes-
thetic it shaped signatures and authorship were decadent lux-
uries. What mattered was to make objects that anyone could
use and that everyone would want to â to find a universal lan-
guage of art made up of shapes and forms and colours. Here
in Mexico was a civilisation quite literally built on these things.
Looking at the anonymous work of an indigenous artist Anni
breathed: âWeâre not alone any more.â
To see what happened next you need to go to Milan to Mu -
dec the cityâs new Museum of Cultures. Mr and Mrs Albers
would travel to Mexico 14 times in the two decades after their
first visit and to other Latin American countries besides. As
they travelled they collected: a hoard of Meso american arte-
facts â which they stored with characteristic plainness in a
cupboard in their basement in Connecticut (Josef had taken a
job at Yale in 1950) â but also the images that soaked into their
eyes and minds and almost at once into their art. These inter-
woven collections will be shown side by side in Milan in an
exhibition called A Beautiful Confluence.
It wasnât just how indigenous art looked that intrigued
them; it was what it stood for. It was everywhere â in the soil
in the cloth in the traditional colours and patterns of adobe
houses. As with pre-Columbian pottery figures individu-
ality was beside the point. What counted was repetition re-
iteration â what Josef in his own art called âthe stubbornness
of working in variantsâ. r
BAUHAUS BELOW THE BORDER