The Abstract Art of Josef Albers
Background
Born on March 19, 1888 in the town of Bottrop in Westphalia, Germany, Josef Albers is an artist who made significant contributions to the modern art education programs of the 20th century. Though he began work as a schoolteacher in his home town, art truly became his passion. In 1916 Albers started in printmaking at the Kunstgewerbschule in Essen, and in 1918 he received his first public commission for a stained-glass window for a church in the area.
With his skills as a maker of stained glass, he joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in 1922. Doing well in his roll, he was eventually promoted to professor in 1925, the same year he would marry his wife, Anni Albers (née Fleischmann). At the same time he was at the Bauhaus, other notable artists included Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Unfortunately, with the rise of the Nazi’s in Germany the Bauhaus was closed in 1933. Following this Albers and his wife emigrated to the United States where he would take a job as the head of a new painting program in Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He would stay there until 1950 when he left to head the department of design at Yale University. Albers would retire from teaching in 1958. In 1963, he would publish one of his most well known works called Interaction of Color which presented a theory of color being based on an internal and…
