Who Was Josef Albers?

Josef Albers was a painter, educator, and one of the key figures of the Bauhaus who later helped shape American modern art. After emigrating to the United States, he taught at Black Mountain College and later at Yale, where his disciplined approach to color and form influenced generations of artists.

Josef Albers.

Albers believed that seeing was an active skill—something you could train. His teaching emphasized the emotional and optical power of color, and his famous series Homage to the Square explored how simple shapes could hold endless meaning. For African-American art history, Albers is especially significant because his time at Black Mountain College placed him in direct conversation with artists like Jacob Lawrence.

Although their backgrounds were worlds apart, the exchange of ideas between Albers and Lawrence helped establish a more integrated foundation for American modernism. The ripple effects of that moment still reach artists and educators today.