Expanding the understanding of textile and fiber arts, this edition of the Bulletin features two distinct bodies of work that are intimately connected despite being separated by hundreds of years. Placing ancient Andean textiles from South America by unknown artists in conversation with works by global modern practitioners—such as Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral—Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art shows how both traditions harnessed the structure of the loom to create dynamic geometric designs. The 50 extraordinary pieces in this volume span over 2000 years and illustrate weaving’s complex and varied ways of conveying meaning, from stunning iconography to bold structural choices. In highlighting the aesthetic and cultural choices of both ancient and modern artists, this publication elevates textile arts beyond mere ornament to assert their role in the history of art past and present.

"Shows that precolumbian tectonic forms (especially as found in sculpture and weaving) appear to be an overlooked source, or anticipation, of much of the art of the 20th century. Second part of book deals with artifacts as American art and addresses reception of ancient tectonics in the 20th century. Emphasizes intense relationship that some members of the New York School (particularly Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb) had during 1940s with the aboriginal arts of the North American part of the hemisphere and thus the affinities between their work and the work of the older Torres Garcâia in Montevideo, at the other end of the continent"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Anni Albers was a founding member of the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Her teachers and colleagues at the Bauhaus included Itten, Kandinsky and Klee, whose intellectual study of 'primitive' art proved crucial both in raising the status of that art, and in establishing a model for the discussion of modern abstract work. Albers' own investigation of the techniques and abstract designs of ancient American weavers led her to argue that their skill was unsurpassed in the modern world, and to employ those techniques in her own work. Virginia Gardner Troy continues Albers' story beyond the Nazi closure of the Bauhaus to her emigration to America and subsequent association with the Black Mountain College, Albers was able to build up a significant collection of ancient Perivian textile art and to establish an international reputation for her own textiles. Extensively illustrated, this book offers a fascinating insight into Anni Albers' work and the history of the re-evaluation of ancient skills and techniques in weaving.

This survey of textile fundamentals and methods, written by the foremost textile artist of the 20th century, covers hand weaving and the loom, fundamental construction and draft notation, modified and composite weaves, early techniques of thread interlacing, interrelation of fiber and construction, tactile sensibility, and design. 9 color illustrations. 112 black-and-white plates.

An unprecedented study that reveals tapestry's role as a modernist medium and a model for the movement's discourse on both sides of the Atlantic in the decades following World War II