JOSEF ALBERS
His Work as Contribution to Visual Articulation
in the Twentieth Century
Eugen Gomringer [Editor],
Josef Müller-Brockmann [Designer]
New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., [1968]. First edition. Oblong quarto. Light gray cloth with "hommage to the square" blind stamped on front panel. 198 pp. 16 serigraphs [silkscreens], 96 illustrations in color and black and white. Multiple paper stocks. Book design and typography by Josef Müller-Brockmann. Spine heel tapped. Glossy offset pages lightly sunned at edges. Jacket with a short, closed tear to lower front panel edge and trivial wear to upper edge of the rear panel. The 16 serigraphs are often stripped from this edition, making collectible copies scarce. Offered here is the best copy out there: a fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
12.5 x 10.75 hardcover book with 198 pages and 16 serigraphs and 96 illustrations in color and black and white. The Serigraph plates were prepared and loaned by Ives-Sillman Inc. New Haven, CT and printed by Siebdruck-Atelier Herbert Geier, Ingolstadt.
Includes essays by Clara Diament de Sujo, Will Grohmann, Norbert Lynton, and Michel Seuphor. Translated by Joyce Wittenborn. A chronological overview of the artists career from 1916 - 1968, compiled with his co-operation. Text includes Poems and Statements by Albers, Biographical Notes, Publications by Albers, Bibliography, List of Exhibitions, Works in Public Collections and Lists of Illustrations and Reproductions.
From the book: "The work of Josef Albers, one of the former "Bauhaus masters," especially his work as a painter, has steadily grown in fundamental significance for the development of visual design in the 20th century. The numerous publications that concern Josef Albers have, however, for the most part dealt with specific aspects of his work; now the time seems ripe for a presentation of all his work, from the earliest pieces done in 1916 down to his creative activities at the present time.
"Eugen Gomringer presents Josef Albers' work as a painter in a series of groups within a sequence that is basically chronological. What emerges is a creative activity that is infinitely more varied and comprehensive than has often seemed the case when judged only on the basis of his best-known work. Perspectives open up that reveal periods of creation that occurred between the major, predominant groups of his work, and show them in their significance and continuity. With this viewpoint in mind, the illustrations have been chosen with the greatest care and in consultation with the artist.
"The text that introduces each group of works establishes the links between them, their creative intentions as well as the conditions which gave rise to lthem and the situation and thinking of the artist at the time. since he has always tended to accompany his work with explanations, many of these are included in the text. Words and illustrations have been intentionally separated in order that the illustrations can be viewed as a continuum, despite their division into groups of works."
Josef Albers (1888 – 1976) was a German-born American artist and educator whose work formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the twentieth century.
Albers enrolled as a student in the Vorkurs of Johannes Itten at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920. Although Albers had studied painting, it was as a maker of stained glass that he joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in 1922, approaching his chosen medium as a component of architecture and as a stand-alone art form. Walter Gropius, asked him in 1923 to teach in the preliminary course ‘Werklehre' of the department of design to introduce newcomers to the principles of handicrafts.
In 1925, Albers was promoted to professor, the year the Bauhaus moved to Dessau. At this time, he married Anni Albers (née Fleischmann) who was a student there. His work in Dessau included designing furniture and working with glass. As a younger art teacher, he was teaching at the Bauhaus among artists who included Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. The so-called form master, Klee taught the formal aspects in the glass workshops where Albers was the crafts master; they cooperated for several years.
With the closure of the Bauhaus under Nazi pressure in 1933 the artists dispersed, most leaving the country. Neither Josef Albers nor his wife Anni spoke a word of English when they left Germany for the United States in 1933 to teach at Black Mountain College, an art and design school that had opened a few months before on a shoestring budget in rural North Carolina. Founded by a radical educationalist John Rice, Black Mountain was committed to experimentation, cross-disciplinarity and the idea that everyone should pitch in, whether it was to teach a class, or fix the plumbing.
The Alberses were defining influences on the school, whose students and teachers included many of the most influential US artists, designers and artisans of the late 20th century, from Cy Twombly and Robert Motherwell, to Willem and Elaine de Kooning. Merce Cunningham formed his first dance company there, John Cage staged his first happening, and they began lifelong collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg. The Alberses persuaded friends to help out, either by teaching like Xanti Schawinsky and Lyonel Feininger, designing buildings like Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, or donating books to the library like Alfred Barr and Walker Evans.
Josef Albers taught at Black Mountain College for sixteen years. In 1950 he joined the faculty at Yale University as chairman of the Department of Design.
“As with most graphic designers that can be classified as part of the Swiss International Style, Joseph Müller-Brockmann (Switzerland 1914 – 1996) was influenced by the ideas of several different design and art movements including Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus. He is perhaps the most well-known Swiss designer and his name is probably the most easily recognized when talking about the period. He was born and raised in Switzerland and by the age of 43 he became a teacher at the Zurich school of arts and crafts.
“Perhaps his most decisive work was done for the Zurich Town Hall as poster advertisements for its theater productions. He published several books, including The Graphic Artist and His Problems and Grid Systems in Graphic Design. These books provide an in-depth analysis of his work practices and philosophies, and provide an excellent foundation for young graphic designers wishing to learn more about the profession. He spent most of his life working and teaching, even into the early 1990s when he toured the US and Canada speaking about his work. He died in Zurich in 1996. — Kerry Williams Purcell
Excerpted from Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin's "A Conversation with Josef Müller-Brockmann," Eye, Winter, 1995: Josef Müller-Brockmann . . . "began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman before, in 1936, establishing his own Zurich studio specialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. By the 1950s he was established as the leading practitioner and theorist of the Swiss Style, which sought a universal graphic expression through a grid-based design purged of extraneous illustration and subjective feeling . . . . Müller-Brockmann was founder and, from 1958 to 1965, co-editor of the trilingual journal Neue Grafik (New Graphic Design) which spread the principles of Swiss design internationally. He was professor of graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich from 1957 to 1960 and the Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm from 1963. From 1967 he was European design consultant for IBM."