Born Annelise Fleischmann, Anni Albers rebelled against her comfortable upbringing to study at the Bauhaus during its most impoverished years. After finishing the foundations coursework, her choices for further study (as a female student) were limited and she began working in the weaving workshop. She quickly embraced the technical and aesthetic challenges of weaving, however, and would revolutionize both aspects of the medium with her experimentation and modern design. She also understood that the Bauhaus needed to create designs that could be industrially manufactured and while she remained committed to the handloom, she also thought of her products as prototypes for mechanical production.

Marrying Bauhaus master instructor Josef Albers in 1925, the pair was central to Bauhaus teaching and artistic production, especially after Anni became the head of the weaving workshop in 1931. When mounting pressure from the Nazi party threatened the Bauhaus, the Alberses were hired at Black Mountain College. While her husband taught a range of art classes, Anni led the weaving and textile design program until 1949, when they moved to Connecticut. There, she continued designing fabrics for mass-production, creating more artistic handloom work, and exhibiting her work to high acclaim. She also began experimenting with printmaking in 1963, after a trip to the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. Until her death, she experimented with various printing techniques and continued her pursuit of innovative textile design.