Josef Albers, German-American painter, graphic artist, designer, and influential teacher, who investigated color relationships in his geometrical abstractions. Born in Bottrop, Germany, Albers attended art schools in Berlin, Essen, and Munich and then studied at the avant-garde Bauhaus laboratory-workshop from 1920 to 1923. He taught design at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1923 to 1925, in Dessau from 1925 to 1932, and in Berlin from 1932 to 1933. He emphasized functionalism and suitability in modern design. After the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in 1933, Albers went to Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where he
Albers emphasized rectilinear shapes of strong, flat color. The interplay of hues heightened the nonrepresentational, purely optical effect of the forms. In the famous experimental Homage to the Square series, on which Albers worked through the 1950s, progressively smaller forms are calculated to illustrate his theories of how changes in placement, shape, and light produce changes in color. Albers's Interaction of Color (1963) is a basic text. His work influenced the op art and minimal art of the 1960s.
Source: Cited from Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia with revisions.