Josef Albers

By Fritz Horstman The essence of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color in a format that engages learners of all ages and levels and encourages a hands-on approach Interaction of Color is often presented as an overarching theory of color, but it is actually a method of learning how to better see and understand color—many of the color exercises illustrated in Interaction of Color were devised by Albers’s students: cutting and pasting, looking, pondering, and learning. This workbook companion is a teaching tool designed to enable readers to engage in the kinds of tactile creativity and exploration that characterized Albers’s own classroom.Focusing on eight of the most important lessons in Interaction of Color, this book invites readers to learn by doing, using only simple materials. Core instructions for each exercise are enhanced by additional tips, references to Albers’s original text and illustrations, and stories about how Albers presented the ideas in class. The book and exercises are sufficiently nuanced to challenge and inspire seasoned artists, designers, and educators while also being readily accessible to younger readers and less-experienced practitioners.Paperback144 pages | 112 color illustrationsYale University Press, 20246 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780300272437Literature, Education

Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers's Color Experiments

Edited by René SpitzPhotographs by Hans G. ConradPrefaces by Volker Troche and Alexander Wetzig A rare and intimate portrait of Albers in the classroom Legendary for his tenure at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale, Josef Albers (1888–1976) was one of the most influential art educators of the 20th century. Between 1953 and 1955, Albers taught several preliminary design courses at the Ulm School of Design (HfG) in Germany. Swiss photographer Hans G. Conrad (born 1926), then a student at HfG, documented Albers’ teaching in an extensive series of over 400 photographs, depicting his lectures to and interactions with the students. These images are published here for the first time in their entirety. Juxtaposed with around 80 works on paper by Conrad from Albers’ exercise on “Interaction of Color,” they create a multifaceted and lively portrait of Albers in action teaching the fundamentals of art and design. Hardcover302 pagesText in German and EnglishWalther Koenig, 20219.8 x 1 x 9.1 inchesISBN 9783753300634Monographs

Interaction of Albers

By Josef Albers Foreword by Nicholas Fox Weber “One of the most important books on color ever written.”—Michael Hession, Gizmodo “Interaction of Color with its illuminating visual exercises and mind-bending optical illusions, remains an indispensable blueprint to the art of seeing. . . . An essential piece of visual literacy.“—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’ unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers. This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers. Josef Albers, one of the most influential artist-educators of the twentieth century, was a member of the Bauhaus group in Germany during the 1920s. In 1933 he came to the United States, where he taught at Black Mountain College for sixteen years. In 1950 he joined the faculty at Yale University as chairman of the Department of Design. The recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, Albers was the first living artist ever to be given a solo retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Paperback193 pages | 40 color illustrations, 16 line drawingsYale University Press, 2013Originally published in 19636 x 0.6 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780300179354Artist Monographs, Art History, Color Theory

Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

By Josef AlbersForeword by Nicholas Fox Weber"The magnificent presentation of this edition will continue to make this book indispensable to the next generation of art students and teachers alike."—Douglas F. Smith, Berkeley Public Library, Library Journal"Josef Albers' Interaction of Color stands alone among color theory books: a classic that never fails to surprise with its continued relevance."—ImprintOne of the most influential books on color ever published, Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color is a masterwork. Originally issued in 1963 as a limited-edition set of commentary and 150 silk-screened color plates, the book introduced generations of students, artists, designers, and collectors to Albers’ unique approach to complex principles.While the original publication has long been out of print, this beautiful new edition now brings Interaction back into classrooms, studios, and onto bookshelves, where it will find an eager new audience. Lavishly produced as a two volume slip-cased set, this book replicates Albers’s revolutionary exercises, explaining concepts such as color relativity and vibrating and vanishing boundaries through the use of color, shape, die-cut forms, and movable flaps that illustrate his astonishing demonstrations of the changing and relative nature of color. Also included for the first time are new studies from the Albers archive, produced by the artist’s students in the early 1960s.A celebration of Albers’s legendary achievements, this beautiful publication is an essential addition to any serious art library.Hardcover cloth-bound144 pages, 2-volume set | 6 black-and-white, 145 color illustrationsYale University Press, 200916.6 x 12 x 2.6 inchesISBN 9780300146936Artist Monographs, Color Theory

Interaction of Color: Complete Edition

Foreword by David Cleaton-RobertsTexts by Brenda Danilowitz and Jeannette Redensek Josef Albers was one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists, teachers, and theorists of art. Alongside teaching at the Bauhaus school in Germany and later at Black Mountain College and Yale University in the United States, he created seminal work in diverse mediums from painting and printmaking to furniture design and stained glass. His lifelong explorations into form, vision, and the processes of making art led to his ground-breaking Homage to the Square paintings and confirmed his reputation as a leading proponent of abstraction. This publication considers Albers’s early development as an artist, beginning with the pre-Bauhaus years when he worked as an elementary-school teacher in his native Bottrop in north-west Germany, while sketching the landscape and architecture of his home town and studying courses in art by night. Focusing on his prints and other works on paper, the book reveals not only the unappreciated naturalistic origins of his art, but also his ongoing interest in producing organic, surrealistic forms alongside the geometric abstraction for which he is best known. It presents dozens of prints, paintings, and drawings from the first half of his career, as well as previously unseen photographs of the artist at work and on research trips to the ancient sites of Mexico where he found important sources of inspiration for his art and theories. With texts by two recognized Albers scholars, this volume offers a fresh and surprising view of a celebrated pioneer of modernism.Hardcover160 pages | 158 illustrationsArt/Books, 20228.2 x 10.5 x 0.8 inchesISBN 9781908970572Modernism, Artist Monograph

Josef Albers: Discovery and Invention – The Early Graphic Works

pEdited by Heinz Liesbrock Texts by Gottfried Boehm, Vincent Broqua, Fritz Horstman, Raimer Jochims, Donald Judd, Heinz Liesbrock, Amy Jean Porter, Jeannette Redensek, Margit Rowell, and Nicholas Fox Weber The essential account of Albers’ enormously influential proto-Minimalist series, featuring studies and archival materials Josef Albers’s groundbreaking series Homage to the Square comprises roughly two thousand oil paintings. His continuous reflections and refinements for more than 25 years inspired numerous young minimal and conceptual artists in their search for a reduced formal language. This outstanding catalogue explores the secret of Albers’s subtle aesthetic and unearths its preconditions: What is the significance of the square? How does his impression of color and its use as a material change during this period? Featuring studies on paper, archival materials, as well as essays by internationally-leading Albers experts such as Jeannette Redensek and Heinz Liesbrock, this richly illustrated publication sheds light on the various inspirations that influenced Albers early on in Europe and later in America, and illustrates the lasting impact of his art and thinking.As an influential teacher, writer, painter, and color theorist JOSEF ALBERS (1888, Bottrop–1976, New Haven, CT) is one of the leading pioneers of twentieth-century modernism. From 1923 onwards he taught at the Bauhaus, and continued to do so after his emigration to the USA in 1933 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and at Yale University, where he worked on his Homage to the Square from 1950 until his death.Hardcover356 pages | 220 illustrationsHatje Cantz, 20228.75 x 12 inchesISBN 9783775754163 Monographs

Josef Albers: Homage to the Square 1950–1976

By Charles Darwent “A meticulously researched, elegantly written, and generously illustrated biography of an artist whose personality was as enigmatic as his art…Darwent deftly characterizes the outsized egos and philosophical and petty rivalries that roiled the Bauhaus…An authoritative and sensitive portrait of a modern master.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review“A gripping biography of a German artist unjustly pigeonholed as the creator of interminable variations of pictures of squares…Darwent draws extensively on Albers’s previously unpublished writings and drawings to fully capture the artist’s life…Sympathetic and generously illustrated.”―Publishers Weekly Drawing on extensive unpublished archival writings, documents, and illustrations, this is the first full-scale biography of one of the 20th-century’s great artists. In his accessible study of the “whole” Albers, Charles Darwent combats the fables while telling the fascinating story of an artist, friend, and intellectual. Among Albers’s unpublished papers are letters from friends John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Eva Hesse, as well as fans and collectors ranging from the composer Virgil Thomson to the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. If his network of influence was surprisingly wide, so too, were his interests. He started life at the Bauhaus as a glass-maker and went on to create fonts, to run their famous wallpaper workshop, and to make furniture whose designs are still in production eighty years later. He pioneered the study of color at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and chaired the design department at Yale University. While books have been written about Albers for specialist audiences, this new volume fulfills the clear need for a more general study. Hardcover400 pagesThames & Hudson, 20186.8 x 1.5 x 9.8 inchesISBN 9780500519103Artist Monographs, Art History, Biography

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Josef Albers

Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers's Color Experiments

Interaction of Albers

Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

Interaction of Color: Complete Edition

Josef Albers: Discovery and Invention – The Early Graphic Works

Josef Albers: Homage to the Square 1950–1976

Josef Albers: Life and Work

Shop at Neue Josef Albers

Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers's Color Experiments

Interaction of Albers

Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

Interaction of Color: Complete Edition

Josef Albers: Discovery and Invention – The Early Graphic Works

Josef Albers: Homage to the Square 1950–1976

Josef Albers: Life and Work

Shop at Neue
Josef Albers