Following their precipitous assembly on the famed Bauhaus college in 1922, artists Josef and Anni Albers, arguably the most enduring couple to emerge from the Bauhaus movement, would chart the remainder of their lives as a type of two-person inventive powerhouse. Regardless of spending greater than half a century collectively and having fun with flourishing particular person careers, although, there have been solely three events on which the Albers’ collaborated artistically: Easter, New Yr’s, and Christmas.
The Albers had “the utmost respect for each other’s work,” says Nicholas Fox Weber, govt director of the non-profit Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, who was a detailed private pal of the couple’s, and wrote the 2020 visible biography Anni & Josef Albers: Equal and Unequal. However the couple, who married in 1925, have been content material to stay solidly in their very own spheres. “She was the weaver and he was the painter, and neither was going to get into the opposite’s realm,” Weber explains.
They’d, nonetheless, stray from that rule for these three choose holidays, throughout which they labored collectively to make commemorative artwork. True to their modern views, the Albers’ vacation playing cards aren’t merely easy greetings, however relatively uniquely design-centric takes on the vacation custom. In addition they present a uncommon glimpse into how two of essentially the most influential current designers loved Christmas as a pair.
A BAUHAUS APPROACH TO GREETING CARDS
The Basis’s assortment of the Albers’ vacation playing cards begins in 1934, at first of a brand new chapter within the {couples}’ lives. The 12 months prior, the Bauhaus was compelled to shut by political strain from the Nazi celebration—strain that additionally spurred the Albers to relocate to the U.S. Each Josef and Anni took up educating positions in North Carolina at Black Mountain School, a location that impressed a number of of the Christmas playing cards to come back.
At first look, the playing cards don’t precisely appear like conventional Christmas notes (other than the standard chorus, “Joyful Christmas and Joyful New Yr, Josef and Anni Albers”). Moderately, every one is its personal exploration in graphic design, that includes particulars like textile-inspired dot patterns, abstracted letterforms, and hand-altered postcards.
The pair’s 1934 Christmas card was one of many first that Josef printed at Black Mountain School. Its easy, all-caps crimson font displays a distinctly Bauhaus emphasis on simplicity and legibility over ornamentation, whereas the composition as a complete embraces the design very best of balanced asymmetry. Weber once told Dezeen of Josef and Anni’s shared design philosophy, “They have been each very keen on kind following perform. All the pieces was about course of and understanding the supplies and know-how of placing them collectively.”
In later years, significantly between 1950 and 1960, the playing cards exhibit a rising fascination with form and line, utilizing a minimalist black and white palette as a place to begin. In 1951, {a partially} erased grid suggests the define of a Christmas tree. The next 12 months, a sample created solely from white dots evokes a type of festive textile, harking back to a few of Anni’s groundbreaking work within the weaving area.
A christmas custom
A better inspection of the playing cards, Weber says, reveals some clues as to how the Albers spent their Christmases.
“There have been a whole lot of issues they didn’t do, however in their very own easy approach, they celebrated Christmas,” he says. “I say their very own easy approach, as a result of they spent it at residence collectively—not socializing—and listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. While you have a look at the vacation playing cards, you possibly can actually virtually think about the readability of the Goldberg Variations: a lightness, a sure rhythm.”
Past the principle artwork displayed on every card, the Albers additionally paid shut consideration to every missive’s precise building. The letters have been so well-made, Weber says, that most of the Albers’ buddies framed them yearly.
“The vacation playing cards relate very carefully to the Albers’ very stunning stationery. We’re speaking in regards to the days when loads was achieved by letter. Anni and Josef had significantly good-looking letterheads—you knew that each element of the spacing was given nice consideration. The playing cards are within the custom of the letterheads. The vacation itself was necessary to each of them; they each had a way of Christmas custom,” Weber says.
Anni, for one, got here from a rich background, as soon as sharing with Weber her distinct recollections of touring by carriage to her uncles’ houses, the place, alongside her brothers and sisters, she would eat delicacies together with beluga caviar, rock lobster, and an ice cream cake. Josef, who grew up in a middle-class family, loved these tales of extra. In 1975, Weber personally bought the elements for Anni and Josef to get pleasure from a Christmas dinner harking back to these luxurious early years. That vacation season was finally the final that the 2 shared, as Josef died the next March.
“To this present day, at Christmastime, I crave the pure tastes of the Alberses’ final Christmas collectively and should have one such atavistic meal,” Weber wrote in an essay on the topic for Air Mail final 12 months. “And I take heed to Glenn Gould enjoying that phenomenal music of Bach, conscious that in Leipzig, Josef had made fantastic stained-glass home windows very close to to the church the place Bach had lengthy been organ grasp, and that the elegant intelligence of Bach suited the Alberses completely.”
