03/19/2025
Guests sometimes ask if the Albers Cottage here at Lake Eden is where Joseph and Anni lived. But actually they lived in another cottage that was accidentally burnt down in the 40’s and the foundation of which are the stones that our Log Cabin sit on. The legend of the Albers Cottage is that the professor was asked to design a new faculty lodging and drew it up on the back of a napkin! While the original structure has been added onto over the years and it has held several different names, we love to share the origination story.
Happy Birthday to Josef Albers! Albers (1888-1976) grew up in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany, and was trained as an art teacher at Königliche Kunstschule in Berlin. He enrolled in the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920, joining the faculty in 1922. Albers was asked by Walter Gropius, the founder and director of the Bauhaus, to teach the preliminary handicrafts course known as “Werklehre”, and when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, he was promoted to professor and taught alongside artists Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. At this time, he married Bauhaus student Anni Fleischmann. In 1933 the Bauhaus closed due to pressure by the N**i party, and Josef and Anni Albers were invited to teach at Black Mountain College. At Black Mountain, Albers led the innovative visual arts program until 1949. His courses emphasized experimentation with materials and color by doing simple exercises repeatedly and requiring students to rethink the ways they saw the world. He famously expressed that his goal was “to open eyes.” His classes at Black Mountain were powerful, with artists like Ruth Asawa, Susan Weil, Robert Rauschenberg, Hazel Larsen Archer, and Ray Johnson citing Albers as a major influence. Josef Albers became a U.S. citizen in 1939.
___
Josef Albers teaching at Black Mountain College. Courtesy of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.
