Anni Albers was the first textile artist to whom the New York Museum of Modern Art dedicated a solo exhibition in 1949. She received numerous awards, yet often stood in the shadow of her husband, the artist Josef Albers, whom she studied under at the Bauhaus school. A retrospective at Düsseldorf's K20 Museum now showcases her textile and graphic design oeuvre mainly created with a weaving loom.

Albers attended the Weimar Bauhaus school from 1922, where she studied and later taught weaving — the only course available to women. Experimenting with both traditional textile design and industrial weaving techniques, Albers was also influenced by the color theory of artist Paul Klee, who informed the Bauhaus color palette of gray, black, red and mustard that is evident in this work.

Klee also aroused Albers' interest in abstraction: "By looking at what he did with a line or a dot or a brushstroke ... I tried through my own material and my own craftsmanship to find my own way," said Albers in an interview in 1968.

Josef Albers joined the Bauhaus school in 1920 as a student but soon became a teacher, initially for his skill creating stained glass. Later, he was the temporary deputy director. His became famous for his painted geometric shapes and bright colors, as seen here in this 1961 work. Like Klee and Johannes Itten, Josef Albers was a role model for his student Anni. The two married in 1925.

After the National Socialists closed the Bauhaus school, Anni and Josef Albers left for the US in 1933 and initially taught at Black Mountain College. Anni Albers combined craftsmanship with modern art, establishing weaving as a fully-fledged and "useful" art form. For example, she had already experimented with synthetic fibers at the Bauhaus, to create curtains that were easier to wash.

Travel led the couple to Mexico, Cuba, Chile and Peru. In the "countries where abstraction originated," Anni Albers studied traditional weaving patterns and techniques. In 1965 she published her seminal work On Weaving, in which she explored the history and significance of the art form. While she also painted, drew and experimented with printmaking, her primary medium until 1968 was weaving.

While her woven pictures with abstract shapes were intended as works of art for viewing, Albers also created functional room dividers, carpets and curtain fabrics. But throughout, Albers saw the woven thread as a universal language. In the pictured work titled Epitaph, which was 1.5 meters in length and made of cotton, jute and Lurex, the woven lines symbolize an inscription.

By the 1960s, Albers began experimenting with printmaking techniques including lithography and, as seen above, with screen printing. But until her death in 1994, she always remained faithful to the geometric abstraction instilled during her Bauhaus coming-of-age. The "Anni Albers" exhibition in the Düsseldorf K20 runs from June 9 through September 9, 2018.

They wanted to change society - and created a completely new, radical architecture. To this day, the modern ideas of Bauhaus School teachers and alumni remain influential. The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in Weimar. Its first director was Walter Gropius. The school buildings in Weimar, designed by the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, are now World Heritage Sites.

The Haus am Horn in Weimar is also a World Heritage Site. Built in 1923, it now looks simple and unspectacular. But back then a commitment to simplicity was revolutionary: bright, modern, affordable, and built with a functional layout and innovative materials. The building is the prototype for an estate to house the relatives of Bauhaus members.

In 1925 the Bauhaus School had to move to Dessau. The new conservative government in Weimar cut the school's funding because it considered it "left-wing." Dessau marked the start of its cooperation with industry and creation of the first tubular steel cantilever chair, the Wassily chair. The school building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius, is now considered a key European modernist work.

In Dessau three double houses were built in which the Bauhaus masters lived, including Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. They were also bold visions for modern living: functional, with large windows that were meant to create a link between exterior and interior. In 1928 Walter Gropius resigned as Bauhaus director. He was succeeded by Hannes Mayer and in 1930 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

In 1932, Mies van der Rohe moved again with the Bauhaus: in Berlin he ran it for a year as a private institution before the Bauhaus School had to close in 1933 under pressure from the Nazis. Nonetheless, between 1913 and 1934 several modernist housing estates were built in Berlin. Six of them are now World Heritage Sites, among them the Siemensstadt Estate, on which Gropius also worked.

The Bauhaus members brought elegance and light into the world of work. The Fagus factory in Lower Saxony was designed by Walter Gropius together with architect Adolf Meyer. Its cubist forms, abundance of steel and glass and bright factory rooms are typical. It's considered a forerunner of the later Bauhaus buildings in Dessau and is a World Heritage Site. Shoe lasts are still produced here.

Industrial mining architecture: the buildings of the Rammelsberg ore mines in Goslar are preeminent examples of the Bauhaus-inspired Neues Bauen (New Building) style. The architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer designed them in 1936. Ore was extracted here until 1988. The Rammelsberg complex is now a museum and visitors' mine.

Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer are also responsible for designing the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen. This gigantic industrial complex was built between 1927 and 1932. Now the Zollverein complex is protected by UNESCO as testimony to the heyday of heavy industry in Europe. Coal was mined here for 135 years. The mine was decommissioned in 1986.

The Bauhaus architects also exported their artistic and innovative ideas abroad. In 1930 in the Czech city of Brno, the Villa Tugendhat was finished according to plans by the later Bauhaus director Mies van der Rohe. It was commissioned as a home by industrialist Fritz Tugendhat and his wife Grete. The villa is now an icon of modernist architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After Hitler took power in 1933, many Jews fled to Palestine, among them Bauhaus alumni. Affordable housing had to be created for the many new immigrants. In Tel Aviv, the White City, a collection of more than 4000 buildings, was created between 1933 and 1948, designed mainly by German Jewish architects. It, too, is a World Heritage Site.

Germany's newest World Heritage Sites are two homes in the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, a housing estate in the Neues Bauen style. Both houses were designed in 1927 by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, whose 17 building projects in seven countries are on the World Heritage list. Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius also designed houses in the Weissenhof Estate.

The ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau, near Berlin, was completed in 1930. The second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer and his partner Hans Wittwer designed the complex. It was built by the Bauhaus construction department. The Trade Union School in Bernau has now been included on the World Heritage list as an extension of the already-listed sites in Weimar and Dessau.

These now hold "World Heritage status": the Laubengang Houses in the Törten district of Dessau. The five apartment blocks were built under the supervision of Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer.