Josef Albers: The Interaction of Color

Born in Germany in 1888, Josef Albers was one of the most influential artist-educators of the 20th century. Best known for his iconic color square paintings, his exploration and expansion of complex color theory principles and dedication to experiential education based on observation and experimentation, radically altered the trajectory of arts education in the United States.

Throughout his 30-year career as an educator, Albers collected and documented the exercises created by his students in his color courses, which were inaugurated at Black Mountain College and reached their development at Yale University. In addition to publishing his own studies, Albers selected many student exercises for publication in The Interaction of Color. When known, the names of his students were listed alphabetically in the original edition, followed by the numbers of the folders containing their studies.

Each exercise represents the result of a specific color exercise dealing with some aspect of color interaction or relativity. Moving from simple to complex, from left to right, and top to bottom, many exercises build upon the results of the ones that precede them.

This photograph depicts Josef Albers teaching color theory at Black Mountain College during the summer session of 1944, the first of a series of legendary summer music and art institutes at the college. In Albers’ classes, from the 1940s onwards, students would first work with colored papers rather than with paint.

The case to the left of the enlarged photograph contains examples of a specific type of exercise utilized by Josef Albers in the classroom called the matière, or material study. The matière, was a central component of the Bauhaus preliminary course, developed by Johanness Itten.

Matière exercises addressed a student’s perception of objects by touch and direct experience through combinations and manipulations of simple materials.

At Black Mountain College, where nature was abundant and fine arts materials limited, Albers encouraged students to incorporate natural and commonly found materials into their studies.

He continued to utilize this teaching exercise at Yale University, where he stated in a lecture “you mustn’t think of the autumn as a time of sadness, when winter is coming, because all the trees, they know winter is coming, so they get drunk! With color! Ach, it’s beautiful! So now bring in leaf studies!”

Of note is the study located in the upper left hand corner of this case, which was created by Eve Hesse (1936–1970), a sculptor who became known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics and was among a group of artists that ushered in the post minimal art movement.

This print illustrates the rarely published equilateral triangle color system, depicting three primary colors, three secondary colors, and three tertiary colors.

The first of the three trios, the primary colors, are in the three corners: Yellow and blue at the base, and red at the apex. The less opposite secondary colors are in the middle of the outer edges, and the tertiaries naturally meet in the center.