b. 1888,
Bottrop, Germany; d. 1976, New Haven
Josef Albers was born March 19, 1888, in Bottrop,
Germany. From 1905 to 1908, he studied to become a teacher
in Büren and then taught in Westphalian primary schools from
1908 to 1913. After attending the Königliche 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.