Josef Albers (1888–1976) was an American/German painter, sculptor, and architect. He taught at the Bauhaus, one of Europe's most prestigious and progressive art schools (which combined principles of painting, craft, and design in avant-garde artistic philosophies) and is considered one of the 20th century's most influential art teachers.

Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany, and began studying art in Munich, followed by the Bauhaus in Weimar in the early 1920s. In 1925, Albers moved with the Bauhaus to Dessau, Germany, and later to Berlin, whilst teaching courses in furniture design and glassmaking . 


Following the forced closure of the Bauhaus in 1933 due to the Nazi rise, Albers immigrated to the United States, and eventually became a citizen six years later in 1939. He taught at Black Mountain College and at Yale University, painting works such as his famous 'Homage to the Square' series, which experimented with color theory and juxtaposed hues. In 1963, Albers published a dissertation about color theory titled 'The Interaction of Color', and his color based experiments with geometric abstractions led to subsequent series, including 'Variants', 'Biconjugates', 'Structural Constellations', and sandblasted glass paintings.

Retrospectives of Josef Albers’s work have been conducted at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Albers died in New Haven, Connecticut in 1976 and in the same year, the Josef Albers Foundation was established, followed by a museum dedicated to the artist in Bottrop, Germany in 1983.