Josef Albers Biography
Bottrop, Germany 1888 - New Haven, Connecticut 1976
German painter and graphic artist. He gained U.S. nationality in 1939, and was an artist and German professor whose work, as much as in Europe as in the United States, created the basis for some of the most influential artistic education programs of the 20th century.
Except for his first works, Albers always avoided illustration and looked beyond the simplification of forms. Quickly his work ran deep in the field of geometric abstraction, with a precise style, cold and removed from any hint of spontaneity or personal expression.
Albers studied art in Berlin, Essen and Munich before studying at the prestigious Bauhaus de Weimar in 1920. He began to teach within the Department of Design in 1923 and became a professor in 1925, the same year in which the Bauhaus moved to Dessau.
With the closure of the Bauhaus under the pressure of the Nazis in 1933, Albers immigrated to the United States and joined the faculty at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He was in charge of the art program until 1949. From 1950 to 1958, Albers directed the Department of Design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Museums and Collections: - Dallas Museum of Art, Texas - Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - Guggenheim Museum, New York - Metropolitan Museum of Art Timetable of Art History, New York - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York - National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgo - National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. - National Gallery of Australia, Canberra - National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa - New York Public Library - Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California - Quadrat Bottrop - The Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Alemania - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. - Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts - Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia - Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York - Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design, Berlin - Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Illinois - Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York City - Calderara Foundation Collection, Milan - Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio - Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York - Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire - Guilford College Art Gallery, North Carolina - Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. - Hyde Collection Art Museum, Glens Falls, New York - Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas - Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey - Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design - Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma - Philadelphia Museum of Art - San Diego Museum of Art, California - Sheldon Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. - Southern Alleghenies Museum, Pennsylvania - Tate Gallery, London, UK - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid - Walker Art Center, Minnesota