Josef Albers

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Josef Albers

Born
Died
Nationality
Field
Movement

March 19, 1888

Bottrop, Westphalia Germany
March 25, 1976 (aged 88)
German-American
Abstract Painting, Study of Color
Geometric abstraction

Josef Albers (March 19, 1888 March 25, 1976[1]) was a German-born American artist and
educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the
most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century.

[edit] Life
Albers was born in Bottrop, Westphalia (Germany). He studied art in Berlin, Essen, and Munich,
before enrolling as a student in the basic course of Johannes Itten at the prestigious Weimar
Bauhaus in 1920. The director and founder of the Bauhaus Walter Gropius asked him in 1923 to
teach in the preliminary course Werklehhre' of the Department of Design, to introduce
newcomers to the principles of handicrafts, because Albers came from that background and had

appropriate practice and knowledge. In 1925 Albers was promoted to Professor, the year the
Bauhaus moved to Dessau. At this time he married Anni Albers (ne Fleischmann) who was also
a student there. His work in Dessau included designing furniture and working with glass. As a
younger art teacher, he was teaching at the Bauhaus with artists including Oskar Schlemmer
Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Klee was the so called form master who taught the formal
aspects in the glass workshops where Albers was the crafts master; they cooperated for several
years.
With the closure of the Bauhaus under Nazi pressure in 1933, Albers emigrated to the United
States; in November 1933 he joined the faculty of Black Mountain College, North Carolina,
where he ran the painting program until 1949. At Black Mountain his students included Robert
Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Ray Johnson and Susan Weil. He also invited important American
artists as Willem de Kooning, to teach in the summer seminar. Weil remarked that as a teacher,
Albers was "his own academy" and said that Albers claimed that "when youre in school, youre
not an artist, youre a student", though he was very supportive of self-expression when one
became an artist and began his or her journey.[2] Albers produced many woodcuts and leaf studies
at this time.
Josef Albers, Proto-Form (B), oil on fiberboard, 1938, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
In 1950 Albers left Black Mountain to head the Department of Design at Yale University in New
Haven, Connecticut. While at Yale, Albers worked to expand the nascent graphic design program
(then called "graphic arts"), hiring designers Alvin Eisenman, Herbert Matter and Alvin Lustig.[3]
Albers worked at Yale until he retired from teaching in 1958. In 1962, as a fellow at Yale, he
received a grant from the Graham Foundation for an exhibit and lecture on his work. At Yale,
Richard Anuszkiewicz and Eva Hesse were notable students. Albers also collaborated with Yale
professor and architect King-lui Wu in creating decorative designs for some of Wu's projects.
Among these were distinctive geometric fireplaces for the Rouse (1954) and DuPont (1959)
houses, the faade of Manuscript Society, one of Yale's secret senior groups (1962), and a design
for the Mt. Bethel Baptist Church (1973). Also, at this time he worked on his structural
constellation pieces. In 1963 he published Interaction of Color which presented his theory that
colors were governed by an internal and deceptive logic. Also during this time, he created the
abstract album covers of band leader Enoch Light's Command LP records. He was elected a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973.[4] Albers continued to paint and
write, staying in New Haven with his wife, textile artist Anni Albers, until his death in 1976.

Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, 1965

Accomplished as a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker and poet, Albers is best
remembered for his work as an abstract painter and theorist. He favored a very disciplined
approach to composition. Most famous of all are the hundreds of paintings and prints that make
up the series Homage to the Square. In this rigorous series, begun in 1949, Albers explored
chromatic interactions with flat colored squares arranged concentrically. Painting usually on
Masonite, he used a palette knife with oil colors and often recorded colors used on the back of
his works.
In 1971 (nearly five years before his death), Albers founded the Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation,[5] a non-profit organization he hoped would further "the revelation and evocation of
vision through art." Today, this organization not only serves as the office Estate of both Josef
Albers and his wife Anni Albers, but also supports exhibitions and publications focused on
Albers works. The official Foundation building is located in Bethany, Connecticut and "includes
a central research and archival storage center to accommodate the Foundation's art collections,
library and archives, and offices, as well as residence studios for visiting artists."[6] The U.S.
copyright representative for the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.[7]
The executive director of the foundation is Nicholas Fox Weber, an author of fourteen books.[8]
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation is represented by The Pace Gallery, New York.

[edit] Style
Albers's work represents a transition between traditional European art and the new American art.
[9]
It incorporated European influences from the constructivists and the Bauhaus movement, and
its intensity and smallness of scale were typically European.[9] But his influence fell heavily on
American artists of the late 1950s and the 1960s.[9] "Hard-edge" abstract painters drew on his use
of patterns and intense colors,[10] while Op artists and conceptual artists further explored his
interest in perception.[9]