Museo Jumex Examines How Travel to Mexico Influenced the Work of Anni Albers

  • MEXICO CITY, Mexico
  • /
  • October 26, 2020

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Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Mitla, México, ca. 1936-1937 (Detail) Courtesy of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation 1976.7.1161 Photo: Tim Nighswander / Imaging4Art © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society, NY. DR © Josef Albers / BILDKUNST / SOMAAP / México / 2020.

In Mexico City, Museo Jumex now presents the fourth edition of the Passersby series, on view until February 28, 2021. This exhibition explores how Anni Albers’s (Germany, 1899 - USA, 1994) trips to Mexico influenced her work in different fields and will outline the personal and professional relationships forged through this experience.

Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann, known as Anni Albers, was an artist, designer, essayist, collector, researcher, and teacher. She visited Mexico thirteen times with her husband, artist, and educator Josef Albers (Germany, 1888 - USA, 1976). Her travels through different regions of Mexico, in search of archaeological sites, textiles, and other local crafts, significantly influenced her work and thinking.

Anni Albers was an avid observer of the textile traditions of multiple cultures, recognizing the weavers of ancient Peru as her great teachers. Her writings show an analytical mind, interested in linking her own thinking regarding the complexity of weaving with a broad understanding of the world she inhabited, so as to transcend it.

Through documents, objects, photographs, reproductions, and original works by Anni Albers, as well as contributions by other artists, Passersby 04: Anni Albers offers a contextualized reading of her passage through Mexico. The exhibition also draws parallelisms between modern artistic practices and the ancient and contemporary cultures of the Americas.

Passersby is a series of biographical micro-exhibitions that highlight the aesthetic and conceptual dialogues between Mexican and foreign artists. As part of the conversation, and accompanying the documentary component of the show, works by contemporary artists who have reflected on similar themes to those explored in each exhibition, are incorporated. These offer a contemporary reading of what the passage of these important historical figures through Mexico was like.

On this occasion, along with the work of Anni Albers, pieces by other artists are presented, including a photographic series by the artistic duo Lake Verea, who have spent time at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation registering objects—both personal and professional and which they have found in their archives—capturing images that speak of who Anni and Josef Albers were. Th exhibition is organized by Catalina Lozano, Guest Curator.
 


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