Josef Albers

Made over the course of a quarter century between 1950 and his death in 1976, Josef Albers’ groundbreaking series Homage to the Square comprises 2,000 oil paintings. His quest for continuous reflection and refinement inspired numerous young Minimalist and Conceptualist artists in their search for a reduced formal language. This outstanding volume explores the secrets of Albers’ subtle aesthetic and the questions it poses: what is the significance of the square? How did Albers’ thoughts on color and its use as a material evolve over this span?
Featuring studies on paper, archival materials and essays by Albers aficionados Margit Rowell and Donald Judd, among others, this richly illustrated publication sheds light on the various inspirations that influenced Albers early on in Europe and later in America, and illustrates the lasting impact of his art and thinking.
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 the Homage to the Square series. He taught at various institutions throughout America, including Yale University. He died in 1976.

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.

In 1925, textile artist Anni Fleischmann (1899–1994) married multimedia artist Josef Albers (1888–1976) and thus began one of the most artistically fruitful marriages of the 20th century. Both students-turned-masters of the Bauhaus and later attendees of Black Mountain College, Anni and Josef revolutionized their respective fields as individual artists and as a couple.

In this beautiful tribute to creative collaboration, the Mexican photography duo Lake Verea trace the material and intellectual traces of the Albers’ creative influence through the archival ephemera held in their estate.

Here, Lake Verea documents such items as the Albers’ correspondence with Bauhaus colleagues, tubes of paint and fabric fibers. The personal context of Anni and Josef’s creative life together emerges from these objects, conversations and associations. This is an unusually intimate portrait of two legendary figures as much as it is a meaningful exploration of a marriage.

“Mexico is truly the promised land of abstract art,” Josef Albers wrote to his former Bauhaus colleague Vasily Kandinsky in 1936. Josef Albers in Mexico reveals the profound link between the art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica and Albers’ abstract works on canvas and paper. With his wife, the artist Anni Albers, Albers toured pre-Columbian archeological sites and monuments during his 12 or more trips to Mexico and other Latin American countries between 1935 and 1968. On each visit, Albers took black-and-white photographs of pyramids, shrines, sanctuaries and landscapes, which he later assembled into rarely seen photo collages. The resulting works demonstrate Albers’ continued formal experimentation with geometry, this time accentuating a pre-Columbian aesthetic.

Josef Albers in Mexico brings together photographs, photo collages, prints and significant paintings from the Variants/Adobe (1946–66) and Homage to the Square (1950–76) series from the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation. Two scholarly essays, an illustrated map and vivid color reproductions of paintings and works on paper illuminate this little-known period in the influential artist’s practice.

Lauren Hinkson is Associate Curator of Collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Hinkson conducts permanent collection research with a focus on postwar, contemporary, and time-based media art. Hinkson manages the Guggenheim’s acquisition program and is one of the organizing curators for the museum’s Young Collectors Council, which acquires the work of emerging artists for the permanent collection. She lectures and publishes on these topics. Hinkson graduated from Brown University with a BA in the History of Art and Architecture.

Joaquín Barríendos is a professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He teaches graduate courses focused on visual culture and Latin American art, with an emphasis on social movements, artists networks, geopolitics of art, visual translatability, conceptual practices, and institutional critique.

German-born abstract painter Josef Albers laid the foundations for some of the most important art education programs of the 20th century. In 1936, during his time working at the 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, where he lectured for eight years. 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. The artist died in 1976.

Sarah Meister is Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.