Anni Albers

Albers's Bauhaus diploma piece of 1930 was a wall covering for an auditorium, woven from cotton and cellophane to absorb sound and reflect light, and that practical genius ran through her career alongside abstract pictorial weavings such as Six Prayers. In 1949 she became the first textile artist given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. Her book On Weaving is still the clearest explanation of how structure makes meaning in cloth. She taught at Black Mountain College with her husband Josef, and later turned to printmaking.