Explore Quotes by Josef Albers

My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theatre and all such nonsense, you know.

I went to the Academy and studied with Stuck who was then a big man. But didn't interest me. I didn't know that before me there was Kandinsky and Klee who had also studied with Stuck. He had a good name at that time.

The aim of our studies is to prove that color is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what color is physically.

When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see.

It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe, you see. To be a painter was terrible.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

I love very much to draw animals.

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich.

You see, I have in my teaching - I always say I've done it for a hundred years and have had thousands of students - I have always spoken against just falling onto your knees for so-called accidents, I mean a result you are not responsible for.

I'm not a talker. I'm a formulator.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is - as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

We never really perceive what color is physically!

Learn to see and to feel life; that is, cultivate imagination, because there are still marvels in the world, because life is a mystery and always will be. But be aware of it.

I count all the time on resonance. I call on this, you see.

In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.

When we were in the seminary we got a stipend direct from the government and for that stipend we had an obligation to stick to our teaching job for five years.