Through the Years
│1880s
Josef Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany.
Age 14. Josef is enrolled in preparatory school at Langenhorst to begin training as a school teacher.
Josef continues his education at the Lehrerseminar in Büren and is certified as an elementary school teacher.
Josef teaches in rural village schools in Dülmen and Stadtlohn, before returning to Bottrop to teach in the Josef Schule.
He visits the Folkwang Museum in Hagen where two paintings by Cézanne make him feel that his life has changed forever.
Josef enrolls at the Royal School of Art in Berlin, where he obtains his qualification as a high-school art teacher.
He visits museums and galleries in Berlin, and begins to paint. When he returns to the region around Bottrop, he draws portraits of family and friends and views of the Westphalian towns and countryside.
Josef returns to the Ruhr region and again teaches elementary-school. He takes evening printmaking classes at the School of Crafts and Applied Arts in Essen.
He is commissioned to create a window to commemorate fallen soldiers for St. Michael's Church in Bottrop, producing his first work in stained glass.
Josef moves to Munich and attends the Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts where he studies with Franz von Stuck.
He moves to Weimar and enrolls in the Bauhaus, whose teachers include Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, and Oskar Schlemmer.
Josef works in the Bauhaus glass workshop and is asked by Gropius to teach the Vorkurs, or preliminary course, which he shares with László Moholy-Nagy. He undertakes major commissions for large stained glass windows in several important new buildings.
Josef marries Annelise Fleischmann, a student in the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Since the Bauhaus Dessau has no glass studio, Josef produces sandblasted glass paintings with the Berlin firm of Puhl & Wagner.
While continuing his teaching, Josef designs large-scale windows for the newly built Grassi Museum of Applied Art in Leipzig and the Ullsteinhaus publishing work in Berlin. He also makes tableware and designs a typeface.
Josef becomes director of the furniture and wallpaper workshops. His work is included in a traveling exhibition organized by Hannes Meyer. He acquires his first camera – a Leica – and begins to photograph his surroundings and his colleagues.