Josef Albers

Josef Albers (1888–1976) was one of the most influential abstract painters and art teachers of the twentieth century. Albers's artistic career, which bridged European and American Modernism, consisted mainly of a tightly focused investigation into the perceptual properties of color and spatial relationships. Working with simple geometric forms, Albers sought to produce the effects of chromatic interaction, in which the visual perception of a color is affected by the hues adjacent to it. Albers's precise application of color also created plays of space and depth, as the planar colored shapes that make up the majority of his works appear to either recede into or protrude out of the picture plane.

Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany, and studied briefly at the Königliche Bayerische Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Munich, in 1919, before becoming a student at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920. In 1922, Albers joined the school’s faculty, first working in stained glass and, starting in 1923, teaching design. In 1933, he and Anni Albers emigrated to North Carolina, where they founded the art department at Black Mountain College. During their time at Black Mountain, Albers began to show his work extensively within the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Addison Museum of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1935); J.B. Neumann’s New Art Circle, New York (1936, 1938); The Germanic Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1936); Katharine Kuh Gallery, Chicago (1937); San Francisco Museum of Art (1940); and the Nierendorf Gallery, New York (1941). The Alberses remained at Black Mountain until 1949 and, in 1950, moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where Josef Albers was invited to direct a newly formed department of design at the Yale University School of Art. In 1950, too, he developed what would become his seminal Homage to the Square series, which he continued to elaborate until his death in 1976. This body of work was featured in a major exhibition organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1964 that traveled to twenty-two venues in the United States and Latin America. Albers retired from teaching in 1958, a few years prior to the publication of his important text Interaction of Color (1963), which was reissued in two volumes in 2013. Following numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, as well as his participation in Documenta I (1955) and Documenta 4 (1968), Albers became the first living artist to be the subject of a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with his career-spanning retrospective there in 1971.

More recent exhibitions include Painting on Paper: Josef Albers in America, which originated at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2010; traveled to Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat, Bottrop, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Kunstmuseum Basel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centro de Arte Moderna, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; and the Morgan Library and Museum, New York); Josef Albers: Minimal Means, Maximum Effect at the Fundación Juan March, Madrid (2014; traveled to Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden, Norway); and A Beautiful Confluence: Anni and Josef Albers and the Latin American World at Mudec, Museo delle Culture, Milan (2015–2016). From 2016 to 2017, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented One and One Is Four: The Bauhaus Photocollages of Josef Albers. In 2017, Josef Albers in Mexico was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and traveled to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, in 2018. Anni and Josef Albers: Art and Life was on view at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in 2021 and subsequently traveled to IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno), Valencia, Spain, in 2022. At the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop, Germany, Josef Albers: Homage to the Square was on view from 2022 to 2023. The artist’s first retrospective exhibition in Japan, Josef Albers: Pedagogical Experiments, was on view at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan, in 2023.

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation has been exclusively represented by David Zwirner since 2016. The same year, Josef Albers: Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders was presented at the gallery’s New York location. Josef Albers: Sunny Side Up was on view at David Zwirner, London, in 2017. David Zwirner, New York, presented Josef Albers: Sonic Albers (2019) and the two-person exhibition Albers and Morandi: Never Finished (2021). In 2022, the gallery presented Josef Albers: Primary Colors at its Hong Kong location, and in 2023, Josef Albers: Paintings Titled Variants was presented at the gallery’s London location, in tandem with the group exhibition Black Mountain College: The Experimenters.

Work by Albers is held in important public and private collections worldwide.