Josef Albers

Albers taught at the Bauhaus and was among the last to leave when the regime shut it in 1933, going straight to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where his students included Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. He later ran the design department at Yale. Homage to the Square occupied him for twenty-five years: the same nested squares, thousands of times, in different colours. Interaction of Color argues that colour is almost never seen as it is, only against whatever surrounds it, and teaches by exercise rather than theory. He was married to Anni Albers, the textile artist, whose work was overshadowed by his for decades.