#Black Mountain College

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Ruth Asawa, Untitled (BMC.78, BMC Sunburst), c. 1948–49

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Staff Pick!

Anni Albers (1899-1994) is held in high regard as one of the most paramount textile designers of the 20th century. Albers attended the Bauhaus in 1922 and begrudgingly participated in the weaving workshop as it was the only one available to women at that time. By 1931, Albers had received a diploma for innovative work and stepped into the role as head of the weaving workshop, a rare occurrence for a woman at the school. When the Bauhaus closed in 1933, Albers accepted an invitation to teach at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College. She stayed on as an assistant professor at Black Mountain College until 1949 where she was known for her experimental approaches to materials and processes.  

Albers broke new ground within the world of weaving and graphic design, taking printmaking techniques into uncharted territory. In 1949 she was the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and spent the remainder of her life making and showing art. Despite her prolific artmaking, Albers left behind very little evidence of her working process aside from one unassuming notebook dating to the latter part of her life.  

Anni Albers: Notebook 1970-1980 is a delightful glimpse into the mind of Albers. A facsimile of her simple composition notebook, the publication is replete with spontaneous works and preliminary ideas sketched out in pencil and occasionally red ink. Most works are dated, and a few have titles corresponding to subsequent prints and printed textiles. This is the only known notebook of Albers and a joyous wellspring of inspiration for any textile artist or designer.  

Anni Albers: Notebook 1970-1980 was published in 2017 by David Zwirner Books out of New York. 

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-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

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Josef Albers’ Color Class, Summer 1944, Gelatin silver photograph by Josef Breitenbach

Josef Albers joined the Weimar Bauhaus as a student and later became a faculty member in 1922. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, he was promoted to professor. After the closure of the Bauhaus under Nazi pressure in 1933, Albers emigrated to the United States. He was appointed head of the painting program at the experimental liberal arts institution Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he taught students such as Ruth Asawa and Robert Rauschenberg.

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josef albers teaching at black mountain college, 1946.

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Xanti Schawinsky

Spectodrama, Teil 4, Szene 1. Materialdemonstration. Black Mountain College, 1924-1937

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Women at Black Mountain College weaving with back strap looms in the sun

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Albers colour theory class

Black Mountain

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Photograph: John Cage and Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College, 1948 (courtesy of the John Cage Trust)

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"I think of you all the time and therefor have little to say that would not embarrass you, for instance my first feeling about the rain was that it was like you." — John Cage, from a letter to Merce Cunningham in 'The Selected Letters of John Cage'

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Josef Albers teaching his drawing students at Black Mountain College

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From Ruth Asawa Through Line at The Whitney Museum in New York

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A photo Josef Albers took of himself, and his wife Anni Albers in costume for a Valentine’s Day ball at the college in 1940.

Credit...© 2022 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

NYT - More on Black Mountain College

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Robert Duncan

from Bending the Bow (1968)

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Autobiography, Robert Rauschenberg, 1968

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