Contained within the well-known details of Anni Albers’ personal and professional biography as a Bauhaus émigré is another story of migration—of the ideas, influences, materials, and practices defining the Bauhaus that traveled with her to the United States in 1933, when she and her husband Josef resettled near Asheville, North Carolina to teach at Black Mountain College. Alongside the institution’s ambition to reconcile the art/craft divide, its innovative pedagogical model, and the distinctive language of modernist abstraction Albers and her fellow Bauhauslers brought to their new roles as teachers and designers in the U.S., she also carried with her an abiding interest in Andean weaving, a broad designation that includes textiles from various societies and time periods, including the Wari, Tiwanaku, and Pachacamac groups (500–900 C.E), the Ica, Chimu, and Chancay groups (900-1400 C.E), and the Inca society (1438–1534). Although it may appear out of context for a Bauhaus-trained weaver and designer of modern textiles, Albers was introduced to Andean weaving while still a student at the school, and it remained an important touchstone for her work throughout her career. In the U.S., she continued to share her knowledge about and enthusiasm for Andean weaving with her students and colleagues, and beginning in 1935, she would expand this interest to include Pre-Columbian and Meso-American textiles and sculpture through frequent trips to Mexico and the American Southwest.¹

Ancient and indigenous textile cultures of the Americas—Andean weaving included—also played a critical role in the development of the work of fiber artists who came of age in the U.S. in the late 1950s and 1960s. Anyone who has studied fiber art of this period, myself included, knows this well. Artists such as Sheila Hicks, Alice Kagawa Parrott, Lenore Tawney, Ed Rossbach, Ruth Asawa, Claire Ziesler, and Kay Sekimachi, to name just a few of the pioneers of the field, openly professed an admiration for traditions ranging from Navaho weaving, to the use of the backstrap loom in Mexico and Central America, to the ancient weaving techniques of Peru. Like Albers, they studied examples from these textile traditions in museum collections and anthropological publications, encountered indigenous weavers through travel, acquired material for teaching and study purposes, and in unique ways replicated, appropriated, translated, incorporated, or otherwise drew inspiration from ancient and living textile traditions in the Americas for use in their own work.

In this passage Albers asserts a connection between Andean weaving and the Bauhaus mantra of “truth to materials,” or medium specificity, expressing a prominent strain of her thinking regarding the value of this work for the modern artist, who conceives of textiles as a medium of art rather than merely an applied craft. The passage also highlights how Albers used the Andean example to rewrite the prevailing historical narrative surrounding weaving, including the value of European tapestry, which in 1965 when On Weaving was published, was in the midst of a major revival in Western Europe, one that privileged the French medieval tapestry tradition.⁶ Here, however, against the backdrop of most every form of weaving—which Albers discredits as decorative—Andean textile serves as an alternative, originary moment to which the modern artist might return in order to move forward.

In her expert and definitive study of the influence of Andean and Meso-American weaving on Anni Albers’ formation as an artist at the Bauhaus and its continued impact on her work in the U.S., Virginia Gardner Troy addresses the constellation of cultural forces out of which the artist’s commitment to Andean textiles developed.⁷ Key factors included access to major collections of Andean objects in German museums; published archeological reports and studies documenting Andean weaving techniques and design; and the prominence given to “primitive art” in German Expressionist circles, a category that implicitly includes Andean textiles. The racism inherent to the primitivist discourse that pervaded avant-garde artistic circles in the early twentieth century is well documented, especially as it pertains to the German context, where the non-European artist, projected as a “primitive other,” was regarded as a model of the creative individual working intuitively and directly with materials—free from the conventions of “civilized” European art.⁸

Perhaps less well-known is the extent to which this primitivist discourse shaped the thinking of the Bauhaus at Weimar, in, for instance, Johannes Itten’s pedagogical exercises meant to foster or recover an instinctual creativity in his students, as well as contemporaneous debates over the reconciliation of art and craft. Within the Weaving Workshop at Weimar, the general Bauhaus appreciation for non-European art, albeit viewed through the primitivizing lens mentioned above, was complemented by an elevation of the Andean weaver to the status of an artist who controlled the weaving process from design through production, in contradistinction to the European division of labor between the artist/designer and weaver/craftsperson. Equally powerful was the idea of the Andean weaver operating in a cultural context where textile production was imagined as fully integrated into a way of life rather than holding a subordinate position within a hierarchy of the arts.

Gardner Troy also illuminates the ways in which Andean weaving helped shape the discourse around hand-woven textiles at the Bauhaus in its Weimar phase, a period that Albers retrospectively characterized as “dabbling in a kind of romantic handicraft.”⁹ The classic example is the throne-like African Chair (1921), a collaboration between architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer and weaver Gunta Stölzl. Stölzl produced an Expressionist-inspired tapestry upholstery for the chair, conceived to evoke non-European forms of abstraction and composition influenced by her exposure to non-Western art, Andean weaving included. Similarly, in another example from this period at Weimar, Margarete Willers’s untitled slit tapestry (1922), appropriates an Andean fish motif frequently reproduced in German publications.

In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau and the institution underwent a pronounced shift towards design for industry, but as Troy demonstrates, this shift was not an end to “primitivism in the weaving workshop—just the appearance of a different model that remained rooted in the Andean textile.”¹⁰ In this new context, it was the “structure of the [Andean] fabric itself that was often taken as the primary organizing principle at the formal level” for Bauhaus weavers.¹¹ For Albers and her peers, for whom structure was a modernist concern wrapped up in the quest for a legitimating medium specificity for weaving, Andean multi-ply weaves were particularly compelling as they produced designs through an interpretation of interlocking layers of the textile wedded materially to each other as opposed to compositions perceived to be more surface oriented. Instead of the direct appropriations of Andean design motifs typical of the Weimar Weaving Workshop, Troy details how Albers and other weavers at Dessau turned to the analysis of the multi-ply structures of Andean textiles, as well as the way Andean weavers repeated, mirrored, and inverted the square geometric patterns known as topacu on the tunics. Albers’ signature double and triple weaves from this period are prime examples of her translation of Andean multi-ply techniques, and Troy surmises that the well-known Andean “checkerboard” patterned tunics were also a major influence.¹²

As in the German context, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists played crucial roles in the appreciation of non-European weaving and other textile traditions of the Americas in the United States, and these early efforts by the AMNH to disseminate research about their textile collections represents one such example. Scholars were joined by advocates of hand weaving, constituting what scholar and curator Rebecca Klassen has called a “medium specific information network” about weaving traditions and techniques¹⁶ This network was in place long before Albers’ arrival, and by the mid-1930s she had begun contributing to it as a teacher, hand weaver, and writer.¹⁷ One of the most important figures (and competitor to Albers) in this regard is Mary Meigs Atwater (1878–1956), whose efforts from the 1920s onwards, were instrumental to the American revival of hand weaving. In addition to being a weaver, Atwater was an influential spokesperson, whose research and writing was disseminated through a correspondence course, as well as numerous publications documenting historic weaving patterns of the Colonial period, styles particular to the Appalachian region, as well as so-called “rare weaving techniques,” a category that included weaves used throughout Central and South America, among other regions. Beginning in the 1930s, her contributions to the periodical, The Weaver, included information about Peruvian, Bolivian, Navaho, and Mexican weaves. Her article about the French ethnologist Raoul d’Harcourt’s seminal 1934 publication on ancient Peruvian textiles, Les textiles anciens du Pérou et leur techniques (an essential source for weavers well into the late twentieth century), appeared in The Weaver in 1936.¹⁸

Atwater’s emphasis on the preservation of historic weaves and weaving as a leisure pursuit put her at odds with Albers’ pursuit of weaving as a design profession and art form, and in her writing for The Weaver, among other venues, Albers emphasized Bauhaus priorities regarding structure and directness of expression. While both viewed Andean and other textile traditions of the Americas as valuable technical and aesthetic resources for the hand weaver, they differed in their understanding of how to use those sources in the present. For Atwater the recuperation, preservation, and replication of historic weaves was a legitimate objective, while for Albers, textiles of the past were studied as a catalyst for modernist innovation. Even so, anecdotal evidence suggests that Atwater’s instructional texts about Andean and other non-European weaving techniques were regularly consulted by the generation of weavers who came to fill the ranks of the American fiber art movement.¹⁹

No doubt, artists such as Ed Rossbach, Sheila Hicks, and Lenore Tawney were familiar with Atwater’s research and writing. Equally important to them, as to Albers in Germany, were museum collections and scholars and curators of Andean and Meso-American art. In New England, Hicks found a teacher and mentor in the archaeologist Junius Bird, the world-renowned scholar of Andean textiles, who was Curator of South American Archaeology at AMNH (a painting major while attending Yale, Hicks would write her undergraduate thesis on Andean textiles with Bird as an advisor), while on the West Coast, Ed Rossbach, a professor at the University of California Berkeley campus from 1950 to 1979, was a regular visitor to the research archives and ethnological collections amassed by cultural anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber for the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and also consulted the research and study collection of his predecessor, Lila O’Neale in (what was then) the Department of Decorative Arts. Kroeber and O’Neale were both experts in Andean textiles.²⁰

Hicks was first introduced to Andean weaving as an undergraduate at Yale University, while attending a course on Latin American Art taught by the art historian George Kubler, a specialist in Pre-Columbian Art. As she recalls:

"When I was at Yale studying painting with Josef Albers and pre-Columbian civilizations with George Kubler, the content, and particularly the structures of pre-Columbian textiles really fascinated me ... The rigor and sophistication the Peruvian creators put into controlling how their threads intertwined in three dimensions were [sic] compelling. It was even more intriguing than the Bauhaus program!"²¹

In the same passage, she also mentions Raoul d’Harcourt’s study as an important influence: “This book by d’Harcourt encouraged me to try my hand very freely at intertwining my threads, giving me permission, as it were, to follow in the footsteps of those artisans to explore my own games and the creation of a universal language.”²² Hicks took Kubler’s course in 1954. It was around this time that Josef Albers introduced her to Anni, who aided her in her early experiments on the loom. Letters to Junius Bird from both Hicks and Albers in the mid-1950s regarding their individual research projects (Albers herself took Kubler’s course in 1952) reference one another, suggesting a collegial relationship based on a shared interest in Andean weaving.²³

Hicks continued her exploration of Andean weaving on research trips throughout South America between 1957 and 1959, expanding her knowledge of weaving traditions and techniques. After moving to Mexico in 1959 upon the completion of her MFA, she continued developing her practice as a weaver. The influence of Andean textile culture appears in her work from this period in numerous ways. For instance, her four selvage works made with a single thread, such as Blue Letter or Ancient Writing, reference the ingenuity of Andean technique as well as displaying her interest in Mayan hieroglyphics.²⁴ Hicks’ work also makes indirect reference to the Peruvian funerary practice called the “mummy bundle,” in which the deceased is placed in a basket and wrapped in multiple layers of textiles tied with sashes.²⁵ The bundle form as well as wrapping techniques appeared in her work throughout her career. More generally, the cords, tassels, and stacked additive components like those comprising The Evolving Tapestry or The Principle Wife are also connected to her appreciation for fringe and other non-woven finishing techniques typical of Andean textiles, while also referencing Meso-American and Pre-Columbian ruins.²⁶ She has confirmed “during research visits in 1958–1959, I was able to photograph indigenous weavers and pre-Inca archeological sites. Like the classes I took at Yale, the discovery of the landscapes of these archeological sites is still an inspiration for me.”²⁷ This interest in Andean weaving extended to her design work as well. One of the most relevant examples for the purposes of this essay is the woven yardage she produced for a suit she made (and wore) based on the checkerboard or square pattern typical of Incan tunics, illustrated in d’Harcourt’s Les textiles anciens du Pérou et leur techniques. She discusses this pattern in her undergraduate thesis in a passage illustrated by d’Harcourt’s reproduction, as well as a small weaving from the Minimes series titled Inca Chinchero.²⁸

Lenore Tawney, who studied under two Bauhaus émigrés—László Moholy Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1946, and later, the weaver Marli Ehrman—turned to Andean weaving technique in the creation of her breakthrough sculpted free-hanging “Woven Forms” such as Orinoco (1967). Rebecca Klassen has addressed the numerous ways Tawney’s knowledge of Andean weaving is reflected in her practice, noting the titles of Tawney’s work often reference nationality and culture, or are sometimes “based on her associations with a chosen technique,” as in the double weave used in the panel titled Peruvian from 1962.²⁹ “Peruvian”-ness was also extended to include the knots and fringes that start and terminate the Woven Forms and many other works. This connection was noted by curator Paul J. Smith in his catalog essay for the exhibition Woven Forms at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in 1963, and it also appears in Jack Lenor Larsen’s remarks about Tawney’s work in Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric, where he replaces “Peruvian” with the term “pre-Columbian.”³⁰ “From her study of pre-Columbian art,” he wrote, “Tawney felt that finish might be the most detailed, most labored part. One typical result was the knotted top knots.”³¹

Tawney’s cultural references extended to the incorporation of found material within her work, giving her weaving a generalized “non-western” or “ethnographic” look. For instance, on a trip to Peru in 1965 she acquired beads that she referred to as ‘pre-Columbian.’ She later used those beads in the Shield series, which she had started in 1963. Other works in the series also conjure ancient and/or tribal associations, incorporating shells, feathers, welk egg cases, and porcupine needles. Tawney’s trip to Peru was one of many that occasioned encounters with indigenous people, art forms, and world-views different from her own, fueling her process. In another essay penned by Larsen regarding Tawney and artistic inspiration, he remarked that, “Travel, to her, means perspective, and a reorientation of values necessary as an antidote to some of the culturally deadening aspects of American life.”³² This is reflected in Tawney’s own writing, in which she expresses a longing for an alternative way of being in the world reflective of broader countercultural desires for a reconnection to nature associated with indigenous cultures, wherein creative practice is seamlessly integrated into life. For instance, in a journal entry labeled “Native Amer. Art—Indian” she wrote:

"In the world of the Indian the secular was sacred; even commonplace artistic practices, as decoration of utilitarian ware, repr[esent] a celebration of man’s unity w. nature. ...The use of fur & hide, leathers & quills,
teeth & talons, rocks & clay & body ptg. gives the message that the
divine force imbues all natural forms."³³

Tawney’s integration of beads and natural materials into her weaving allowed her to annex Andean weaving and Native American aesthetics for her own work, linking it cross-culturally and trans-historically with indigenous textile traditions. Hicks, too, understood the textile as a universal language, but in the sense that fiber allowed her to work across media, from painting to sculpture to architecture. By contrast, Ed Rossbach also thought about textile culture in global terms, minus Tawney’s romantic primitivism, or Hicks’ conception of her wide-ranging practice in terms reflecting a Bauhaus-inflected universalism.

While attending the University of Washington, Ed Rossbach studied with German émigré Johannes Molzahn, a graphic designer with ties to the Bauhaus’ early period.³⁴ In addition, he too wrote his undergraduate thesis on Andean textile techniques, supervised in part by the anthropologist Carolyn M. Osborne.³⁵ Between Molzahn, Osborne, and his own predilection for a trial and error method of making, in his work Rossbach cultivated a distinctive relationship to ancient and indigenous textile traditions, including Andean weaving. In particular, there are two aspects of Rossbach’s work that relate to this interest: his use of the ethnographic fragment as a model, and the centrality of basketry to his fiber practice.

With regards to this first aspect, take Young Hercules (1967), an object that replicates the shape and imagery of a fragment of Coptic tapestry belonging to a museum collection, but at a greatly enlarged scale. Moreover, the work is not constructed using a tapestry weave but what he referred to as a Peruvian looping technique. Rossbach was known for his practice of researching and replicating techniques, and the learning-by-doing method characteristic of this work and many others is often coupled with a playful and irreverent tone, by virtue of his use of anachronistic techniques and incongruous modern materials that refuse any claim to historic authenticity.

Rossbach was also an expert in basketry. He published three influential books on the topic, chronicling the history of the field as well as its renaissance among fiber artists of the 1970s and 80s.³⁶ Rossbach’s interest in baskets dates to the early 1940s when he attempted to replicate historic examples of Aleut basketry encountered while stationed at an Airforce base on Adak, in the Aleutian Island chain off Alaska. While unsuccessful, he returned to the genre as a professor at UC Berkeley. There he had access to a vast collection of Native American basketry to support his research-inspired artistic practice. Rossbach was open about how “the ‘ancient’ look or the ‘used’ look of a few of my baskets and raffia panels derived ... from looking at anthropological specimens ... I do think, now, that it related me and my work to the whole history of textiles.”³⁷

Rossbach introduced this global perspective in his book, The New Basketry, which attributed the renaissance of basket-making within fiber art circles to a rejection of the loom and the designer-craftsman model that weavers of his generation had aspired to:

"The focus of hand-weaving shifted in the fifties from what the machine could do to what the machine could not do. The new weavings were self-sufficient. Their justification was not in a possible influence on something else, any
more than the justification of the pursuit of handweaving was, as the Bauhaus once thought, in its providing structural training for work in architecture. Weavers concentrated on processes that were most conspicuously hand processes. Those processes which have resisted mechanization had a special appeal."³⁸