Anni and Josef Albers: art and life

Abstract

Featuring more than two hundred and fifty works, including paintings, photographs, drawings, textiles, and furniture, this volume traces the creative development of Josef and Anni Albers. It features contributions exploring the couple's relationship and aspects of their professional partnership, including their meeting at the Bauhaus School and their years at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Essays examine topics such as the influence of Pre-Colombian art; Josef's masterwork Homage to the Square; Anni's jewelry and works on paper; Josef's classes at Yale University; and Anni's years as a graphic designer after her husband's death. Both artists are celebrated for their achievements in their respective fields--Josef for his color theory classes at Yale, Anni for her innovative use of unconventional materials.

Contents

Foreword / Fabrice Hergott -- Love at first sight / Nicholas Fox Weber -- The meander: A metaphor for the Alberses / Julia Garimorth -- The Bauhaus years -- A framework for free creativity / Julia Garimorth -- The monument disappears: Political formalism and photography in Josef Albers's work / Maria Stavrinaki -- The Black Mountain College experiment -- "Think with your eyes!" / Judith Delfiner -- Pre-Columbian art as transmitters of meaning / Virginia Gardner Troy -- Doping and learning: The paper-folding and color lessons of Josef Albers / Fritz Horstman -- "To rehabilitate" the material: Anni Albers's jewelry / Clara Salomon -- A successful tenure at Yale -- American resonances: Josef Albers and Minimal Art / Heinz Liesbrock -- Painting as vocation: Josef Albers's Homage to the Square / Jeannette Redensek -- Anni Albers: The horizon of silence / Ida Soulard -- Materials for experience: The Alberses' abstract poetry / Vincent Broqua -- Josef Albers on command (notes on album covers) / Hervé Vanel -- Anni Albers: From textiles to paper -- Anni Albers as a "graphics person": Codes, triangles, mazes, and binary systems / Brenda Danilowitz -- Timeline / Sylvie Moreau-Soteras.