The German Bauhaus School (now the Bauhaus School of Design), which integrates painting, crafts and music, inspired modern art. In their long-standing artistic practice, Joseph Albers and Anne Albers (real name Annalis Fleischmann), the close lovers, are famous.
Love comes
Joseph was born in a family of craftsmen in Bottrop, Germany. His grandfather was a carpenter, his father was a painter, and his mother was from a family of blacksmiths... He had a soft spot for manual skills. Joseph received a brochure for the Bauhaus School in his first year, and he was very interested in his school concept of "creating a comprehensive art organization". Influenced by the expressionism of the artistic genre before, he paid more attention to timeliness after entering the Bauhaus School and tried to create works through different media such as tin foil, oak, and sandblasted glass.
Anne comes from a publishing family in Charlottenburg. She had the opportunity to be in opera houses and museums since she was a child. She also studied under the impressionist painter Martin Brandenburg, which cultivated her excellent artistic qualities. At the age of 22, she studied applied arts at the Hamburg Academy. Two semesters later, Annie submitted an application for admission to the Bauhaus School. After being "rejected", she was finally admitted to the school in April 1922.
It is said that it was Joseph's secret help that Anne obtained the precious enrollment quota. In addition to being grateful, Annie has also admired him for a long time. When she first met, she quietly observed his appearance: "Skinny and hungry, with blond hair and elegant bangs." Soon, Anne celebrated her 23rd birthday, and Joseph gave her a statue from the Pergamon Museum. Replica. Half a year later, when Walter Gropius, the principal of the Bauhaus School, dressed as Santa Claus and distributed gifts to the new students, Annie got a printed version of "Escape to Egypt" by the Italian painter Giotto di Bondona. There are texts written by Joseph himself. Such a coincidence made Annie very happy.
When love came on its own, Anne bravely walked with Joseph in spite of her family's opinion. On May 9, 1925, they held their wedding in Berlin.
Close integration of life and art
At the beginning of the 20th century, in the context of the multicultural development of Germany, the Bauhaus School seemed a little conservative. In the third semester, Annie, who had completed the required courses, was in a difficult situation in choosing courses: Architecture, sculpture and other majors that value creativity were only available to boys, and girls had to study pottery, weaving, binding and other less challenging subjects. Annie had to give up her plan to study in the glass workshop with Joseph. The considerate Joseph expressed his willingness to enter the weaving workshop with her. Next, without a proper teacher and having to practice by herself, Annie weaves the interlaced lines very annoyed, but Joseph praised her for creating metaphorical beauty with texture and structure.
After the Bauhaus school moved to Dessau, Joseph stayed on to teach. They lived in the teachers’ apartment and became neighbors with the artists Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky. Newlyweds who are not wealthy take the topic of communicating "simple" art as a compulsory course. Joseph slyly celebrated his origin: "If I was born in a family of intellectuals, it would take a lot of time to get rid of their ideas, maybe I would be clumsy." Anne silently followed her husband's steps and even asked the relatives who came to visit. Park the luxury car out of her sight. "A person can create great art in a simple life."
Annie is free and passionate in the field of weaving. She borrowed vertical and horizontal woven threads to make wall hangings for the newly built principal's residence, and unknowingly transferred the precise geometric design advocated by Joseph to the fabric. Just like Joseph's fascination with metals, cellulose and other materials, Annie tried new and fresh synthetic materials. In 1930, the graduation examination required the design of ornaments for the auditorium of the Bernau Trade Union School. Annie directly mixed transparent cellophane with soft chenille fabrics, and matched with eye-catching black and white lines. A "super curtain with sound insulation and reflective effects" "This was born. Annie also graduated successfully. In fact, she was hired as the head of the weaving workshop a year ago.
Joseph continued to promote the creative concept of close integration of life and art. He talked to Annie more than once about the past: a certain bank in Bottrop had a checkerboard floor paved with black and white marble, and he wandered in those squares when his mother was doing business. Anne was full of affection and love for the chestnut-haired infant Joseph, so she tried to explore the fusion of textile workshop craftsmanship and modern abstract art, and wanted to express herself through textile threads, and then enter a larger artistic scene.
Independent and interdependent
In 1933, the Bauhaus School was oppressed by the German Nazi organization and fell into a crisis. Joseph and the others resolutely resisted it, and Annie was determined to stand with her husband. After the dissolution of the Bauhaus School, with the help of their friend Philip Johnson, they arrived at the newly established Black Mountain College in North Carolina, USA, as founding faculty members.
Through calm and gorgeous artistic thinking, Joseph taught students the aesthetic rules of man-made materials and natural materials, and let the "Bauhaus Thought" shine in the Black Mountain College. Under his guidance, a large number of modern artists came to the fore. Annie set up a knitting workshop and introduced original "play-style" teaching. Together with her students, she used fabric scraps, bottle caps, curtain rings, paper clips and other inconspicuous small parts to make beautiful "jewelry", thereby raising the craftsmanship regarded as "small skills" into a respected art Category.
Joseph and Annie love to travel, create and write. Their footsteps are all over Peru, Mexico and other places, verifying existing aesthetic theories and looking for new creative inspirations when visiting archaeological sites. Annie found unique visual elements from the aboriginal people, and designed circular lines that are as strong as the glyphs. In her later book "On Knitting", she published an investigation on the history of world weaving and its effectiveness in the modern world. Joseph worked tirelessly to paint the local landscape and landforms, in order to study the illusionary deformation of the law of perspective, and thus painted many shining "wallpaper-like" oil paintings.
In 1949, Annie held her first retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the same year, Joseph was invited to serve as the dean of the Yale University Design Department, dedicated to leading teaching through observation and practice. After moving to New Haven, Connecticut, Joseph began to create a series of paintings "A Praise to the Square" and began to write the book "Color Composition". Work is the common focus of Joseph and Annie. They use praise, encouragement, answer questions and even competition as a way of getting along, and interpret the daily life of artists with different artistic achievements.
In 1971, a retrospective exhibition of Joseph's work opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Soon, he negotiated with Anne to establish the "Joseph and Anne Albers Foundation" in order to further support and develop each other's favorite visual arts.
Joseph died in 1976. Anne continued to practice fabric embossing and ink washing design, crayons painting and printmaking... Girls' Generation Anne boasted "no charm". It was Joseph's encouragement that gave her the courage to become an artist, collector and professor.
In 1994, Anne passed away on her wedding anniversary with Joseph. As artist companions, Joseph and Anne have hardly collaborated on any works of art. Their relationship is just like Joseph's affectionate confession when he studied color theory: "The first is self-realization, and the second is the realization of the relationship with others. In my paintings, I try to balance the two extremes-independence and interdependence. "Their avant-garde breath is eternal in the painting and color.
