Josef Albers
(1888 - 1976)

J. Albers Biography
(1888 - 1976)

Josef Albers was a pioneer of twentieth-century modernism, as well as an influential teacher, writer, painter, and colour theorist—now best known for the “Homages to the Square” he painted between 1950 and 1976 and for his innovative 1963 publication “The Interaction of Color”.

He enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1920. This new teaching institution, now so renowned for its effects on all modern design, had been founded one year earlier, and emphasized the connection between artists, architects, and craftspeople. In 1925, he was the first of its student to be asked to join the faculty as a professor. By 1933, when pressure from the Nazis forced the school to close, Josef Albers had become one of its best-known artists and teachers.

Josef and his wife Anni, also a fundamental figure in modernism, emigrated to the United States in November 1933. He had been asked to make the visual arts the centre of the curriculum at the newly established Black Mountain College near Asheville in North Carolina, where they remained until 1949. During this time, Josef and Anni Albers travelled widely both in the United States and Mexico, a country that captivated their imagination and had a strong affect on their art.

In 1950, the Albers moved to Connecticut. From 1950 to 1958 Josef Albers was chairman of the Department of Design at the Yale University School of Art. At Yale, and as guest teacher at art schools throughout America and in Europe, he trained a whole new generation of art teachers. At the same time, he was writing, painting and making prints. In 1971, he was the first living artist ever to be honoured with a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He was still working on his “Homages to the Square” at the time of his death in New Haven, Connecticut in 1976.