ART AFICIONADO

Thursday, March 19, 2026

Josef Albers

Art Appreciation

Josef Albers was born on March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany, into a Roman Catholic family of craftsmen. His early exposure to practical skills like glass engraving and plumbing laid a foundation for his later artistic endeavors.

After working as a schoolteacher from 1908 to 1913, he pursued formal art education at institutions in Berlin, Essen, and Munich, studying under notable artists such as Max Doerner and Franz Stuck. In 1918, he received his first public commission for a stained-glass window, marking the beginning of his professional art career .

In 1920, Albers joined the Bauhaus in Weimar as a student and became a faculty member by 1922, teaching the principles of handicrafts. With the Bauhaus's move to Dessau in 1925, he was promoted to professor and married Anni Albers, a student at the institution and a textile artist.

His work in Dessau included designing furniture and working with glass, collaborating with established artists like Paul Klee. Following the Bauhaus's closure under Nazi orders in 1933, Albers emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the experimental liberal arts institution Black Mountain College in North Carolina until 1949 .

At Black Mountain College, Albers taught students who would later become prominent artists, such as Ruth Asawa and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1950, he joined Yale University to head the design department, significantly contributing to its graphic design program.

Albers' teaching methodology emphasized practical experience and vision in design, profoundly impacting postwar Western visual art. His book Interaction of Color, published in 1963, is considered a seminal work on color theory, exploring how colors interact and influence human perception .

Albers is best known for his series Homage to the Square, initiated in 1949, where he explored chromatic interactions with nested squares. Each painting consists of either three or four squares of solid planes of color nested within one another, meticulously recording the colors used. This series exemplifies his disciplined approach to composition and his deep investigation into color relationships .