Photo:Josef Albers-One and One Is Four
The work of the artist and educator Josef Albers formed the basis of some of the most influential art education programs of the 20th Century both in Europe and in the U.S.A., he was instrumental in bringing the tenets of European modernism, particularly those associated with the Bauhaus, to America.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MoMA Archive
Josef Albers is a central figure in 20th Century art, both as a practitioner and as a teacher at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale University. His series “Homage to the Square” (1949-76), used a single geometric shape to systematically explore the vast range of visual effects that could be achieved through color and spatial relationships alone. Albers made paintings, drawings, and prints and designed furniture and typography. The exhibition “One and One Is Four: The Bauhaus Photocollages of Josef Albers” at MoMA presents a less familiar aspect of his extraordinary career, his engagement with photography, which was only discovered after his death. The highlight of this work is undoubtedly the photocollages featuring photographs he made at the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1932. In 2015, the MoMA acquired 10 photocollages by Albers, adding them to the two donated by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, making its collection the most significant anywhere outside t Josef Albers was the first Bauhaus student to be asked to join the faculty and become a master. At the end of the decade he made exceptional photographs and photo-collages, documenting Bauhaus life with flair. By 1933, when pressure from the Nazis forced the school to shut its doors, Josef Albers had become one of its best-known artists and teachers, and was among those who decided to close the school rather than comply with the Third Reich and reopen adhering to its rules and regulations. In November of 1933, Josef and his wife Anni were invited to the USA when Josef was asked to make the visual arts the center of the curriculum at the newly established Black Mountain College in North Carolina. They remained at Black Mountain until 1949, while Josef continued his exploration of a range of printmaking techniques, took off as an abstract painter, made collages of autumn leaves, kept writing, became an ever more influential teacher and wrote about art and education. In 1971, he was the first living artist ever to be honored with a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At the time of his death in 1976, he was still working on his “Homages to the Square” series.
Info: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 11 West 53rd Street, New York, Duration: 23/11/16-2/4/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:30-17:30, Fri 10:30-20:00, www.moma.org
