Josef Albers, painter and teacher

The exhibition

Albers was born in 1888 in Bottrop, Westphalia. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin (1913-1915), at the School of Arts and Crafts in Essen (1916-1919) and at the Academy of Arts in Munich (1919-1920). From 1920 to 1923, he continued his studies in Weimar, at the Bauhaus. In 1923, Albers headed the glass workshop. After the resignation of Moholy-Nagy in 1928, he became director of the whole preparatory course while also holding the position of Breuer as the head of the furniture workshop. Albers remained a member of the Bauhaus until its final closure in Berlin in 1933.

It was Josef Albers who contributed the most to the propagation of the educational ideas of the Bauhaus. At the Bauhaus he distinguished himself as a glass painter, furniture designer and graphic designer. After 1933, when he emigrated to the United States to found a design school in North Carolina, Albers became a color theorist, theories which were summarized in a work entitled Interaction of Color (1963). He therefore had a great influence on “Op-Art”.

His work and talents as a teacher are characterized by great originality, making him one of the masters of modern art. In 1971, the Metropolitan Musem of Art in New York devoted the first retrospective exhibition about a living artist to Josef Albers.

Formation / Articulation offers an overview of Albers’s work from drawings, generally figurative, to abstractions from the Hommage au carré series.

Bauhaus-Montreal 1985-1986

The Goethe Institute of Montreal, a German cultural center, is the initiator and coordinator of the many events that will take place in Montreal, under the general title of Bauhaus-Montreal, fall 1985 – spring 1986.

Supported by

The exhibition was produced as part of Bauhaus Montreal 1985-1986 in collaboration with the Josef Albers Foundation, Orange, Connecticut. The presentation was made possible through a grant from the UQAM Foundation.