GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY 2009: JOSEF ALBERS

Josef Albers was a German born, American artist, educator and mathematician. He was an accomplished designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker and poet. His work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century. Albers’ work represents a transition between traditional European art and the new American art. His work incorporated European influences from the constructivists and the Bauhaus.

Albers is best remembered for his work as an abstract painter and colour theorist. He is best known for the Homages to the Square, painted between 1950 and 1976, and for his innovative 1963 publication 'The Interaction of Colour'.

The series Homage to the Square, investigate the retinal effects of colour. Colours could expand and contract, reseed or advance, or even create a third colour when only two are present , this relates directly to 1+1= 3.

“1+1=3( or more)” is an important design phenomenon described by Josef Albers. it basically says that two elements in close proximity cause a visible interaction. This interaction can result in perceiving information that is not there.

His presaged the art of Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1960’s. He was a major figure of the Bauhaus, (an influential German school of design and architecture). The Bauhaus developed out of a movement called the European Constructivism, a purely abstract geometric style that developed shortly before the 1920’s. The Bauhaus Constructivists believed that pure abstract forms, such as lines, squares and triangles were more valid than representational painting. These pure forms evoked a “universal” reality. Albers shunned representation representation in favor of the abstract and hard edged geometric shapes he employed in his most famous works. he said...”art should not represent, but present” and preferred the anonymity of machine-like precision for personal expressiveness.”