Anni et Josef Albers. 10 September 2021 to 9 January 2022. MAM, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris – France.

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris exhibit Anni and Josef Albers: more than 350 works – paintings, photographs, furniture, drawings, textiles – indicative of their artistic development. In addition to its comprehensive presentation of their respective oeuvres, this is the first exhibition in France dedicated to the two artists as a couple: to the intimate, empathetic bond that underpinned a lifetime of mutual support and encouragement and an ongoing dialogue founded on shared respect. Not only did they create an oeuvre now considered the basis of modernism, they also passed on their educative values to a whole new generation of artists.

Anni Albers (born Annelise Fleischmann, 1899–1994) and Josef Albers (1888–1976) met in 1922 at the Bauhaus and married three years later. From the outset, they shared the conviction that art could profoundly transform our world and should be at the very heart of human existence: “We learn courage from art work. We have to go where no one was before us.” (Anni Albers)

From the outset the pair made art and its function the core of their thinking. Not only did they insist on a revaluation of crafts and on the benefits of mass production (Bauhaus) as tools for the democratisation of art, they were also convinced that creation was essential to each person’s education. As both artists and teachers, they constantly demonstrated the immeasurable impact of artistic activity on self-realisation and, more broadly, on relationships with others. Guided by these values, they sought to lead their students to greater intellectual independence and an awareness of the subjectivity of perception. As they saw it, teaching is not mere transmission of theory already consigned to books; on the contrary, it consists in constantly raising new questionings, firstly through close observation of the visual and tactile world around us, then via the creative discoveries that come from hands-on experiments withwhatevermaterials are available, regardless of their aesthetic value. “Learn to see and to feel life; that is, cultivate imagination, because there are still marvels in the world, because life is a mystery and always will be. But be aware of it.” (Josef Albers)

A considerable quantity of documentary material – photographs, letters, notebooks, postcards, etc – assembled with the help of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, also provides a context for the work of the two artists.