As architects, our responsibility is not only to deal with the spatial structure but also to maximize and optimize the use of the space and capacity of the buildings. We also need to comprehensively evaluate the surrounding environment and adapt other dements of the building to the landscape, light and shadow transformation, and other factors in the environment. Colour, is one of the important means of enhancing the sensory experience. Here I would love to introduce two-color masters architecture students should know.

JOSEF ALBERS

Albers is an Anglo-American artist known for his iconic series of colorful square paintings, “Homage to the Square”. These works, with his writings, are considered one of the most valuable contributions to color theory. Albers once explained his color relationship,

“Contrast is not just a strange optical phenomenon, it is the core of painting.”- Josef Albers

He believed that the contrast, the difference between tones, would make the color fade away from its original sensuous properties. Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany, on 19 March 1888. He was a student of Johannes Itten, the famous Bauhaus colorist. He joined Bauhaus in 1922 as a stained-glass manufacturer and later became a professor at the Bauhaus DESSAU in 1925.

During this period, Albers took over the ITTEN course and taught with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Albers moved to the United States after the Nazi regime closed the Bauhaus school in 1933. Philip Johnson, then curator of the Museum of Art, found the job positions for Albers and his wife Anni Albers at the Experimental Black Hills College in North Carolina. From 1939 to 1949, he was director of the painting course at The Black Hills College, teaching Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. After Black Mountain College, Albers became the director of design programs at Yale in the 1950s.

His 1963 book The Interaction of Colors remains one of the most influential textbooks in contemporary art education. The artist died on March 25, 1976, in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 88.

Today, Albers’ works are in collections at MOMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of America, Washington, D.C., and the Tate in London, among other internationally renowned museums and galleries.

Please stay tuned with me. I will introduce the second master in my next post.

Here is the second master – Johannes Itten

Thanks for reading ❤

Yanfei ~