Josef Albers Glass, Color, and Light


Book Description

Josef Albers (1888-1976), famous as a master at Germany's Bauhaus until 1933, and then a professor in American schools such as Yale University, influenced many young artists. His Homage to the Square series of paintings remains an important example of 20th-century art. Yet Albers's first great works - the glass pictures that he made in Germany beginning in 1921 - remain little known. Starting with found fragments of colored glass, and later employing a sophisticated sandblasting process, Albers created a new art form.




Interaction of Color


Book Description

An experimental approach to the study and teaching of color is comprised of exercises in seeing color action and feeling color relatedness before arriving at color theory.




Painting on Paper


Book Description

Summary: This publication presents a wealth of in part unknown colored works on paper by Josef Albers (1888-1976), documented for the first time. It was not until the German-born artist emigrated to the U.S. that he emerged as a prominent artist and influential teacher. Beginning in about 1940, Albers allowed himself to be inspired by Mexico's pre-Columbian architecture, sculpture and textile art, which led to a liberation of his aesthetic sensibilities and to unconventional, radiant pitches of color, the likes of which modern painting in Europe had never seen before. In ca. 1950, he discovered the square, in his eyes the ideal form for color. He was both a resolute painter as well as a color philosopher. Each of the works on paper presented here arouses a sensuous fascination for the phenomenality of color.




Intersecting Colors


Book Description

Published to accompany an exhibit on Albers' work as both artist and teacher, this volume assesses Albers' understanding and teaching of color as "the most relative medium in art."




Homage to the Square


Book Description

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at Casa Luis Barragan, Mexico City.




Josef Albers in Mexico


Book Description

Albers in Mexico reveals the profound link between the magnificent art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica and Albers's abstract works on canvas and paper. 'Mexico is truly the promised land of abstract art', Josef Albers once wrote to Vassily Kandinsky. Albers in Mexico reveals the profound link between the magnificent art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica and Albers's abstract works on canvas and paper. With his wife, the artist Anni Albers, he visited Mexico and other Latin American countries more than a dozen times from 1935 to 1968, where he toured pre-Columbian archeological sites and monuments. On each visit, Albers took blackand- white photographs of the pyramids, shrines, sanctuaries and landscapes in and around these ancient sites, often grouping multiple images printed at various scales onto 8 x 10 inch sheets. The result was nearly 200 photo-collages that illustrate formal characteristics of the pre-Columbian aesthetic. Albers in Mexico brings together rarely exhibited photographs, photo-collages, prints and significant paintings from the Homage to the Square and Variants/Adobe series from the Guggenheim Museum collection and the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation. This catalogue includes two scholarly essays, Albers's poetry from the period and an illustrated map, as well as rich colour reproductions of paintings and works on paper.




An Eye for Color


Book Description

Presents a discussion of German-born American artist Josef Albers' perspective on color and use of contrasting combinations of colors to revolutionize the way people look at art.




Josef Albers


Book Description

Previously unseen early works and other unpublished material from the pioneering Bauhaus polymath This publication considers Josef Albers' early development as an artist, beginning with the pre-Bauhaus years when he worked as an elementary school teacher in his native Bottrop in Western Germany, while sketching the landscape and architecture of his home town and studying courses in art by night. With a particular focus on works on paper, the book reveals not only the unappreciated naturalistic origins of his art, but also his ongoing interest in producing organic, surrealistic forms alongside the geometric abstraction for which he is best known. It presents dozens of prints, paintings and drawings from the first half of his career, as well as previously unseen photographs of the artist at work and on research trips to the ancient sites of Mexico where he found important sources of inspiration for his art and theories. With texts by two recognized Albers scholars, this volume offers a fresh and surprising view of a celebrated pioneer of modernism. German-born artist Josef Albers (1888-1976) laid the foundations for some of the most important art education programs of the 20th century. In 1936, during his time working at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he had his first solo exhibition in New York at J.B. Neumann's New Art Circle. In 1949, Albers left the college and began his famous Homage to the Square series. He taught at various institutions throughout America, including Yale University, New Haven. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized Albers' traveling exhibition in 1965 and a retrospective of his work was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1971. He died in 1976.




Anni & Josef Albers


Book Description

A spectacular and unprecedented visual biography of the leading pioneers and protagonists of modern art and design Josef - painter, designer, and teacher - and Anni Albers - textile artist and printmaker - are among the twentieth century's most important abstract artists, and this is the first monograph to celebrate the rich creative output and beguiling relationship of these two masters in one elegant volume. It presents their life and work as never before, from their formative years at the Bauhaus in Germany to their remarkable influence at Black Mountain College in the United States through their intensely productive period in Connecticut. Accessibly written, the book is packed with more than 750 artworks, archival images, and documents - many published here for the first time - all tracing the remarkable lives and careers of this legendary couple. Dispersed throughout area series of short essays on artists that focuses on the Alberses relationship with a number of important artists and architects of the 20th century, like Ruth Asawa, Marcel Breuer, Merce Cunningham, Philip Johnson, Paul Klee, Jacob Lawrence, and many more. The beautifully cloth-bound package utilizes an elegant color palette and design that speaks to the work of both artists. This comprehensive visual biography showcases the artists' rich and dynamic lives, and their infinite influence on each other, as they shared the profound conviction that art was central to human existence.




Leap Before You Look


Book Description

La exposición refleja la historia del Black Mountain College (BMC), fundado en 1933 en Carolina del Norte y concebido como universidad experimental que situaba al arte en el centro de una educación liberal que pretendía educar mejor a los ciudadanos para participar en la sociedad democrática. La educación era interdisciplinaria y concedía gran importancia al debate, la investigación y la experimentación, dedicando la misma atención a las artes visuales –pintura, escultura, dibujo- que a las llamadas artes aplicadas –tejidos, cerámica, orfebrería, así como a la arquitectura, la poesía, la música y la danza.