Josef Albers
Josef Albers brought painterly skills, mathematical inspiration, and rigorous artistic theory together in a tightly defined package that uniquely shaped the course of post-WWII American painting. Born in Germany in 1888, Albers enrolled as a student at the prestigious Bauhaus, where he became a full Professor in 1925, but was forced to emigrate to the USA as a result of the rise of Nazism. He ran the painting program at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where his students included Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, and Ray Johnson. He subsequently left in 1950 to head up the Department of Design at Yale, where he continued to influence a generation of American artists until his retirement in 1958. As a painter, Albers favored a rational and controlled approach to composition, best reflected in his famous series Homage to the Square. His talents were not limited to painting: he was also a notable typographer, graphic designer, photographer, and poet, among many avocations. His theory also found expression beyond the bounds of the classroom and his paintings: his illustrated treatise, Interaction of Color, remains a classic of the discipline. Albers died in 1976, having defined by his theory and his practice paths in abstract painting that still continue to be explored today.
