Anni Albers, weaver and artist

What held my eye at the Anni Albers show at Tate Modern (till 27 January) were the drawings, many reflecting Precolumbian motifs encountered on trips to Mexico as early as 1935-6, after she and her husband had moved from Germany and were working at Black Mountain College.

 She started printmaking in 1963 -

Sometimes the embossing was on metal -

 "Taking a line for a walk"? (Klee was one of her teachers at the Bauhaus) -

This 1970 colour study looks like a random collection of half-triangles ...

 ... but when you look closely you there are larger areas, of grey when combined with orange, of red when combined with grey -

That realisation got me looking for how space emerged in her patterning.

This became a design for Knoll in the mid-70s -

What's the basic unit here - is there one?

 The drawings of knots, preparatory work for a wonderful rug, are gorgeous -

The room centred on her book On Weaving (1965) had several splendid Precolumbian textiles, dating to approximately 500-1100. Such lovely faded colours, the same as those in a Coptic textile, date 800 perhaps, also displayed -

In the final room were samples of different yarns, and some samples woven with them;  beautiful work by Louise Anderson -

 A chance to experience the "haptic and tactile" qualities of the cloth, and very popular -

The big poster outside the museum has a short and striking summary of the exhibition:

An artist who changed weaving
A weaver who changed art

If textile exhibitions in art museums are of interest, this 2015 article on the Tate website deserves your attention:

Why this fascination now? Is it, as Richard Tuttle once stated, because ‘weaving has a certain cast of the future’?