Acquisitions/
1957/
Josef Albers/
Homage to the Square: Light Passage

Josef Albers was born in 1888 in Bottrop, Germany. Albers studied art in Essen and Munich, entering the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920. From 1923 until its closure in 1933, Albers taught at the Bauhaus. Albers emigrated to the United States and became head of the art department at the new, experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In 1935, he took the first of many trips to Mexico, and in 1936 was given his first solo show in New York at J. B. Neumann’s New Art Circle. He became a United States citizen in 1939. In 1949, Albers began his Homage to the Square series.

He lectured and taught at various colleges and universities throughout the United States and from 1950 to 1958 served as head of the design department at Yale University, New Haven. In addition to painting, printmaking, and executing murals and architectural commissions, Albers published poetry, articles, and books on art. Thus, as a theoretician and teacher, he was an important influence on generations of young artists. A major Albers exhibition, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, traveled in South America, Mexico, and the United States from 1965 to 1967, and a retrospective of his work was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1971. Albers lived and worked in New Haven until his death there on March 25, 1976.