josefalbers

1888

Born in Bottrop, GermanySon of craftsmenTrained as an art teacher at Konigliche Kunstschule

In 1920 he enrolled as a student in Johannes Ittenburg’s basic course at the Weimer Bauhaus

Bauhaus

In 1923 he was appointed by Walter Gropius to teach a preliminary course at the bauhaus. He took over the glass workshop and taught principles of handicrafts

As a younger art teacher, he was teaching at the Bauhaus with artists including Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Klee was the form master who taught the formal aspects in the glass workshops where Albers was the crafts master and taught the technical aspects

Josef met Anni Fleischmann shortly after her arrival in Weimar in 1922. She was a student at the weaving workshop where she experimented with new materials for weaving. They married in Berlin in 1925 and were eleven years apart.

Eventually, they moved to one of the masters’ houses designed by Gropius and lived there until 1933, when Josef Albers was asked to make the visual arts curriculum for Black Mountain College in North Carolina.They were a very happy couple and lived out their lives together fostering each other’s creativity and devoted to their philosophy that art was central to human existence

Albers is well known for his series Homage to the Square which he began in 1949 and continued until his death in 1976.This work exemplifies his exploration of the relativity of human perception and the range of psychological effects that colors can produce.

Albers’ interest in color was sparked at the Bauhaus by Paul Klee’s introductory courses

In choosing the square, Albers displayed heavy influence from Kasimir Makevich and Piet Mondrian, both of whom had explored the form’s spiritual and formal possibilities in their own work

In 1963 he published interaction of color which presented his theory that colors are governed by internal and deceptive logic

1976J

Josef Albers continued to paint and write in New Haven Connecticut until his death in 1976