Josef ALBERS

Josef ALBERS (1888 - 1976)

Josef Albers is an American-German artist known for his famous colorful square paintings, notably the series Homage to the Square which he began in 1950, and his contributions to the theory of color. A student of the colorist Johannes Itten, Albers resumed his lessons at the Bauhaus School in 1923, which he shared with László Moholy-Nagy. "Simultaneous contrast is not only a curious phenomenon, it is the heart of painting," he explains about his research on the relationships between colors. "Repeated experiments with adjacent colors show that every motif subtracts its own hue from the colors it carries and therefore influences it." Born March 19, 1888 in Bottrop in the Ruhr area in Germany, he emigrated to the United States after the Bauhaus School closed in 1933 and taught at Black Mountain College where Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg were among the students. Released in 1963, his Interaction of Color remains one of the most influential texts in the teaching of contemporary arts. The artist died on March 25, 1976 in New Haven, Connecticut at the age of 88.