Josef Albers

born Bottrop (GERMANY) 1888 died New Haven, CT (USA) 1976

Josef Albers was born March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, Germany. From 1905 to 1908, he studied to become a teacher in Boren and then taught in Westphalian primary schools from 1908 to 1913. After attending the Kunigliche Kunstschule in Berlin from 1913 to 1915, he was certified as an art teacher. Albers studied art in Essen and Munich before entering the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920. There, he initially concentrated on glass painting and in 1929, as a journeyman, he reorganized the glass workshop. In 1923, he began to teach the Vorkurs, a basic design course. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, he became a professor. In addition to working in glass and metal, he designed furniture and typography.

After the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933, Albers emigrated to the United States. That same year, he became head of the art department at the newly established, experimental Black Mountain College, near Asheville, North Carolina. Albers continued to teach at Black Mountain until 1949. In 1935, he took the first of many trips to Mexico, and in 1936 was given his first solo show in New York at J. B. Neumann's New Art Circle. He became a United States citizen in 1939. In 1949, Albers began his Homage to the Square series.

He lectured and taught at various colleges and universities throughout the United States and from 1950 to 1958 served as head of the design department at Yale University, New Haven. In addition to painting, printmaking, and executing murals and architectural commissions, Albers published poetry, articles, and books on art. Thus, as a theoretician and teacher, he was an important influence on generations of young artists. A major Albers exhibition, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, traveled in South America, Mexico, and the United States from 1965 to 1967, and a retrospective of his work was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1971. Albers lived and worked in New Haven until his death there on March 25, 1976.

Select Timeline

• 1888 Josef Albers born March 19, Bottrop, Ruhr District, Germany.
• 1915 Certified as an art teacher. Visits Berlin museums and galleries.
• 1916 Josef studies lithography part-time.
• 1917 Executes first commission, a stained glass window Rosa mystica ora pro nobis for St. Michael's Church in Bottrop.
• 1922 Josef Albers appointed a "journeyman" and placed in charge of the Bauhaus glass workshop.
• 1926- To 1927 Josef Albers develops sandblasted glass paintings. Designs large scale glass windows fabricated by the Berlin firm of Gottfried Heinersdorff, Puhl and Wagner.
• 1929 Josef shows twenty glass paintings in exhibition of Bauhaus masters in Zurich and Basel.
• 1930 Albers continues his Bauhaus teaching under the new directorship of Mies van der Rohe.
• 1935 Makes first abstract oil paintings.
• 1937 Josef's paintings are included in the first American Abstract Artists exhibition at Squibb Galleries in New York City.
• 1942 Josef Albers' series of zinc plate lithographs, "the Graphic Tectonics", begun as a series of drawings.
• 1950 Josef Albers starts his "Homage to the Square" series of paintings.
• 1957 Josef has an exhibition at Galerie Denise Rene, Paris.
• 1959 Awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship. Mural "Two Structural Constellations" is engraved Corning Glass Building in Manhattan.
• 1963 Josef's monumental mural in red, white, and black, Manhattan, is installed in the Pan Am Building in New York.
• 1964 Creates series of eight "Homage to the Square" images.
• 1970 Albers is made an honorary citizen of his birthplace, Bottrop.
• 1971 Josef Albers is the first living artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Select Artwork

• Jug with vase and small cup - 1914
• Ex Libris Franz Perdekamp - 1915
• Self-Portrait VI - ca. 1919
• Grid Mounted - 1921
• Factory - 1925
• Design for universal typeface - 1926
• Etude: Red-Violet (Christmas Shopping) - 1935
• Study for Layered - 1940
• Leaf Study VI - 1942
• Study for a Homage to the Square - 1949
• Homage to the Square: Blue and Green - 1950
• Study for Homage to the Square: Equilibrant - 1962
• Manhattan - 1963
• Interaction of Color - 1963
• Wrestling - 1976

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