ALBERS, JOSEF

Albers, Josef: translation

(1888-1976)

   painter and graphic artist; foremost interpreter of the Bauhaus* following his emigration and widely considered the forerunner of op art. He was born in the Westphalian town of Bottrop. During 1908-1913 he studied and taught at Berlin's* Konigliche Kunsthochschule. His teaching status brought an exemption from military service during World War I. In 1920 he enrolled in Johannes Itten's* introductory Bauhaus course; he remained with the school until the NSDAP forced its closure in April 1933. He was collabo-rating by 1922 on stained-glass projects with Walter Gropius,* and began team-teaching the introductory course in 1923 with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.* When he left Germany in 1933, he had studied and taught at the Bauhaus for thirteen years, longer than any colleague.

   Albers emphasized technique and material quality rather than style. His early lithographs and woodcuts gradually gave way to brightly colored paintings that, stressing the use of bars and lines, possessed no element of depth or relief. Emigrating in 1933, he brought his ideas first to North Carolina's Black Mountain College and then, from 1950, to Yale. His comprehensive studies of color were published as Interaction of Color (1963).

   REFERENCES:Clair, 1920s; Neumann, Bauhaus; Nicholas Weber, Drawings of Josef Albers.