A presentation on Josef Albers' work

2. josef
albers

3. 888 Born in Bottrop, Germany
Son of craftsmen
Trained as an art teacher at Konigliche
Kunstschule

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

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

14. 1976
J
Josef Albers
continued to
paint and write
in New Haven
Connecticut
until his death
in 1976