Josef Albers

Happy Birthday Josef Albers!! Albers was a painter, an author and educator, a colorist, born in 1888, in Germany. He immigrated to the USA with his wife Anni, in 1933, when the Nazis forced the closure of the Bauhaus, where he was first a student and then a professor. One of my most favorite and enlightening college courses was the study of Josef Albers' work in the Interaction of Color (one of his books) with my college professor Jason Knapp. After establishing the arts center at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, Albers became the chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University School of Art and proceeded to become an abstract painter and one of the foremost art educators of this country, bringing an European influence. His understanding of the relationship and interaction of color is so intriguing to me. When I studied his work we worked from his book Interaction of Color with painted papers that were cut and precisely collaged together to create studies in color subtraction, gradation and transformation; always keeping in mind that color is relative to its surroundings. I also created a collage of a masterwork that led to a project I still do with my students today! Below is the cover of his book, where he makes one color appear as two, with his color subtraction theory. The orange squares in the center are actually the same color, appearing as two, by the simple subtraction of the blue with the blue ground at the top and then taking the orange away from the small square below with the orange ground.