JOSEF ALBERS

I am proud to present today's artist, Josef Albers, one of the most influential and accomplished artists of the 20th century. Albers, born in Germany in 1888, immigrated to the United States when the Nazi regime closed down the Bauhaus. He taught at a number of universities, with students who later shaped modern art (Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenburg, Eva Hesse). Albers' was a painter and printer, and most of his paintings involve blocks of color that interplay with one another, creating illusionary effects to the mind's eye. He studied color theory quite thoroughly, eventually publishing a book entitled Interaction of Color. His theory is now widely accepted and taught throughout the world. Albers died in 1976, at the age of 88. 

Interaction of Color

Yale University Press: "[Interaction of Color] presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds."

Homage to the Square

Albers' "Homage to the Square" series consists of three overlapping squares of different colors aimed to play with the viewer's visual perception. The Artbook chose to list one of his studies for this series. I found the video below, which I think beautifully explains what Albers' is striving to achieve- the vibrating effect of the squares' edges, the appearance of interaction between the squares, and the variation in effect that each color produces. 

Josef Albers was a visionary, to say the least. His extensive impact on the art world is immeasurable.