Josef Albers

Josef Albers (1888- 1976) was a German-born American artist and educator. He was taught for 10 years at the famous Bauhaus at Weimar, Dessau and Berlin. Accomplished as a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker, and poet, Albers is best remembered for his work as an abstract painter and theorist, and is famous for his work with color and squares. In 1933 he was invited to teach at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, where his students included Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Susan Weil. He also invited important American artists such as Willem de Kooning to teach in the summer seminar. In 1963, he published one of his most defining works titled "Interaction of Color" which presented his theory that colors were governed by an internal and deceptive logic. The very rare first edition has a limited printing of only 2,000 copies and contained 150 silk screen plates. This work has been republished since and is now even available as a cell phone app. He was known to meticulously list the specific manufacturer's colors and varnishes he used on the back of his works, as if the colors were catalogued components of an optical experiment. Robert Rauschenberg was known to have identified Albers as his most important teacher.