Josef Albers
American
, 1888
-
1976
Printer, designer and painter, Josef Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany. Initially working in the tradition of Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, he entered the Bauhaus school in 1920 where he was to become a teacher two years later.
Albers later emigrated to America following the closure of the Bauhaus school by the Nazis in 1933. During the 1950s he became Chairman of the Department of Architecture and Design at Yale.
Albers is renowned for his famous series of lithographs and paintings based on the square. Based on very subtle chromatic harmonies, "Homage to the Square" was the result of a preoccupation with abstraction that dated back to the 1920s.
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