Josef & Anni Albers – Art and Life, exhibition at the musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris until 9 January 2022

 Anni and Josef  Albers – Art and Life

With Chris Boïcos

Anni Albers (née Annelise Fleischmann, 1899-1994) and Josef Albers (1888-1976) met in 1922 at the Bauhaus school in Weimar and they married three years later. They had a common and profound commitment to their art: «What our art teaches us is courage. We must go to where no one before us ever went» (Anni Albers.) To their students they said: «Begin by looking and feeling life, cultivate your imagination, because there are still many wonders in the world, because life is a mystery and will remain so. Always be conscious of that» (Josef Albers.)

The current exhibition traces the joint career of both artists from their Bauhaus years (1920-1933), their flight from Germany after the advent of the Nazis in 1933, to their arrival and teaching at the famed liberal arts college in Asheville, North Carolina, Black Mountain College, where they propagated the Bauhaus spirit to the American artists of the 1940s and 1950s. This is a unique opportunity to discover the exquisite painting of Josef Albers - notably his ceaseless variations on the colored square - and Anni Alber’s immensely elegant designs and graphic work as well as the lifelong commitment of both artists to teaching and to the profound seriousness of art.