Anni Albers at Tate Modern

I didn't know anything about Anni Albers but was encouraged to visit the exhibition by the tutor on a course on colour I attended before Christmas. Her husband was Josef Albers, a colour theorist and painted whose name cropped up many times during the course. I finally went along to the exhibition this week.

It was quite odd, in a way, to see and hear people getting excited about weaving and threads and and knots and techniques. I quietly named them textile-heads as they crowded round particular exhibits excitedly discussing something about it. I approve of enthusiasm so that was all ok by me. I looked at colour and design and wondered what I would learn as I wandered around.

Anni Albers was a weaver, an artist who worked with threads rather than paper and paint. She trained at the Bauhaus, almost under duress since weaving was the only course she could do. When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, she went with Josef to teach in a small college in America - in an video interview with her when she was an old woman she tells us about sitting on the bed reading the offer letter with her husband and both deciding the key word that confirmed their decision to go was describing the college as 'experimental'.

The first thing you see on entering the exhibition is a large wooden loom in the first room. There is a wide variety of exhibits: early works from her Bauhaus days, designs and samples, small woven pieces, some of which were done to be framed, watercolour designs for larger woven pieces, testing out ideas, large wall hangings and rugs, room dividers, all sorts of things. She undertook large commissions such as to commemorate the people who died in the Holocaust and designs for wall hangings for a hotel in Mexico to open for the Olympic Games. She wrote books on weaving and textiles and some of these are on display. There's a lot in this exhibition, a labour of love for the curators, with exhibits on loan from museums and galleries all over the world.