Josef Albers with his wife and fellow artist, Anni Albers.
Josef Albers was a German-born artist best-remembered for his never-ending experiments with colour and colour theory. Credited with pioneering modern art and Bauhaus ideas, Albers’ work as an art educator helped shape many generations of future artists, and he is generally viewed as one of the most influential teachers of his generation.
Though he only found fame in later life and died in 1976, Albers’ work remains extremely popular in today’s market, and his Homage to the Square series (in all its different iterations) is particularly sought after. Albers was talented in many fields, but prints dominate the market in his work, accounting for 79% of his art sold at auction, and usually fetching between £1,000 and £5,000.
The course Albers’ life took undoubtedly affected his career and the way he is remembered today, and as such, it’s interesting to know some things about him when examining his art. Below is a list of six things you might not have known about Josef Albers.
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His Father Taught Him Very Useful Skills
Josef Albers’ father was a general contractor who was skilled in plumbing, carpentry, decorating, and more. The young Josef Albers learnt many of these practical skills from his father, and they turned out to be invaluable in his later career; some sources even say that Albers’ technique of painting his squares (such as those in Gray Instrumentation I) from the inside out was a technique his father taught him to minimise the chances of the paint dripping. In later life, when asked about who had impacted his artistic development, Albers used to say, “I come from my father, and Adam. That’s all.”
His Most Expensive Prints Sold For Over £153,000
SP (Homage to the Square) is a series of 12 serigraphs from 1967, and it was sold by Lempertz in June 2022 for £153,521, tripling its top estimate. It’s part of Albers’ larger Homage to the Square series, which he began some time between 1949 and 1951, and which he was still adding to by the time of his death. The series is an extraordinary exploration of colour theory, and it comprises over 1,000 pieces of work. It is viewed as one of Albers’ crowning achievements, and its different iterations are extremely sought-after in the art market today.
SP (Homage to the Square) sold by Lempertz in 2022
He Taught At The Bauhaus
The Weimar Bauhaus was founded in 1919, and Josef Albers joined it as a student in 1920. He quickly gained a name for himself within the school, and in 1925, he became one of the first students to be appointed as a master. It was here that he met his future wife, Anni, who was also initially a student, and who subsequently rose to direct the weaving workshops.
The Bauhaus School of Design
He Emigrated To The United States
In 1933, the Bauhaus faculty decided to close the school in the face of increasing pressure from the Third Reich. Many of the key figures in the Bauhaus subsequently emigrated abroad, including Josef and Anni Albers, a decision that was partly influenced by the fact that Anni was Jewish.
The couple had connections in America who helped push through their paperwork, pay their steamship fare, and sorted out a job for Josef Albers at the newly-formed Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The two artists stayed there for the rest of their lives and established reputations as influential art educators. Josef Albers in particular came to be well-known for his teachings and explorations of colour; his theories also informed much of his own artistic practices, as demonstrated in prints such as Homage to the Square: Edition Keller La-Lk and White Line Squares, Series I.
He Published A Book On Colour Theory
Just one year after his Homage to the Square: Ten Works By Josef Albers prints, Albers published a book titled Interaction of Color. The text included many of the visual exercises Albers made his students do in his classes, and it was dedicated to them for their help in having “visualized and discovered new problems, new solutions, and new presentations.”
The book is now widely praised as being a seminal piece of work on colour theory; combined with the artist’s never-ending Homage to the Square series, it helped secure his legacy as one of the greatest colour theorists of the 20th century, as well as one of the most influential teachers of his generation.
He Made History At The Met
In the first few days after they arrived in the United States, Josef and Anni Albers went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They were immediately enthralled by the number of visitors and the energy of the space, and they continued to visit the gallery together until 1975, one year before Josef Albers’ death. They were thrilled, therefore, when in 1971, Josef Albers became the first living artist to have a solo retrospective at the Met, thus confirming his status as one of the most important and influential artists of his time.
