Source:
Virginia M. Mecklenburg. "The Patricia and Phillip Frost
Collection: American Abstraction, 1930-1945" (Washington, DC:
National Museum of American Art and Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989), pp. 26-28. Copyright 1989 Smithsonian Institution.
All rights reserved.
        
        JOSEF ALBERS
        
        1888 Germany-1976 USA
        
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        An elementary school teacher for twelve years, and an
instructor at the Bauhaus from 1923 until 1933, Josef Albers was
one of the most influential artist-educators to immigrate to the
United States during the 1930s. Following early academic training
at the Royal Art School in Berlin (1913--15), the
Kunstgewerbeschul in Essen (part-time from 1916--19), and the Art
Academy in Munich (1919--20), Albers turned in 1920 to the
innovative atmosphere of the Weimar Bauhaus. There he began his
experimental work as an abstract artist. After three years as a
student, he was hired to teach the famed Vorkurs , the
introductory class that immersed students in the principles of
design and the behavior of materials.
        
        Albers was convinced that students needed to develop an
understanding of "the static and dynamic properties of materials
. . . through direct experience." His students made constructions
with wire netting, matchboxes, phonograph needles, razor blades,
and other unusual materials. They also visited workshops where
craftsmen worked daily with the structural and behavioral
characteristics of industrial and natural materials. [1]
        
        In his own work, Albers investigated color theory and
composition. He began to explore mathematical proportions as a
way to achieve balance and unity in his art. Yet, Albers did not
aim to be a purely analytical painter. Although he had not taken
classes with either Klee or Kandinsky as a Bauhaus student, and
did not profess metaphysical concerns, Albers believed that "Art
is spirit, and only the quality of spirit gives the arts an
important place in . . . life."[2]
        
        Albers had come to his own brand of abstraction over the
course of many years. By 1908 he had discovered Matisse and
C*zanne, and in Berlin he encountered work by Munch, van Gogh,
the German Expressionists, Delaunay, and the Italian Futurists.
Initially an Expressionist, Albers began experimenting with
abstract principles and unusual materials about 1923. His glass
assemblages of these formative years explored the possibilities
of stained, sand-blasted, and constructed arrangements. They are
remarkable for their deft incorporation of such "accidental"
effects as ripples and bubbles---inherent in the medium
itself---into sophisticated designs that explored the balance,
translucence, and opacity.
        
        Albers had weathered Bauhaus moves from Weimar to Dessau, and
then to Berlin, remaining steadfast even after Walter Gropius and
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy left in 1928. In 1933, when the Nazis forced
the closing of the Berlin Bauhaus, Albers left for America where
he introduced Bauhaus concepts of art and design to the newly
formed experimental community of Black Mountain College in North
Carolina.
        
        After fifteen years he left Black Mountain, and in 1950
became chairman of the Department of Design at Yale. On Tideland
, painted between 1947 and 1955, marks this transition and was
painted concurrently with the earliest examples of his well-known
series, Homage to the Square .
        
        Albers, always a careful craftsman, was concerned that future
generations understand his working methods. He often documented,
on the reverse of the fiberboard panels he preferred for his
paintings, the pigments, brands, varnishes, and grounds he had
used in making the painting. Fascinating notations document his
spatial proportions and the mathematic schemes he incorporated in
each work. On Tideland , for example, was painted according to
"Scheme M," in which twenty units of vertical form balance thirty
units of horizontal form. Although concerned with a severely
restricted format in his own work, Albers admitted other
approaches: "Any form [of art] is acceptable if it is true," he
stated. "And if it is true, it's ethical and aesthetic." [3]
        
        An original member of the American Abstract Artists, Albers
showed annually throughout the group's formative years.
        
        1. Josef Albers, "Concerning Fundamental Design," in Herbert
Bayer, Walter Gropius, and Ise Gropius, eds., Bauhaus: 1919--1928
(Boston: Charles T. Branford Co., 1959), pp. 114--121.
        
        2. Josef Albers, "A Note on the Arts in Education," American
Magazine of Art (April 1936): 233.
        
        3. Katharine Kuh, "Josef Albers," in The Artists Voice: Talks
with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 12.
        
        Source: Virginia M. Mecklenburg. "The Patricia and Phillip
Frost Collection: American Abstraction, 1930-1945" (Washington,
DC: National Museum of American Art and Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989), pp. 26-28. Copyright 1989 Smithsonian Institution.
All rights reserved.