I was born in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany on March 19th, 1888. As a young man, I taught the primary grades in Bottrop; then, following study in Berlin, received certification to teach art. During this time I began to think of myself as an artist. In 1920, at age 32, I enrolled at the newly-formed, progressive Bauhaus school in Weimar. (The Bauhaus was a design workshop formed by architect Walter Gropius.) After finishing my studies there, I joined the faculty to teach the preliminary course on material and design. It was during my time with the Bauhaus that I came into my own as a creative talent. Eventually becoming Assistant Director and Director of the Furniture Workshop, I retained my position with the Bauhaus until it was forced to close, under Nazi pressure, in 1933.In America, the organizers of Black Mountain College, a utopian experiment in education in the mountains of North Carolina, asked Philip Johnson, then director of the department of architecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to recommend an art teacher. He suggested I take the position, even though I did not speak a word of English and did not know where North Carolina was; I accepted. (My wife, Anni, thought perhaps North Carolina was in the Philippines.) According to Marcia J. Wade, my influence at Black Mountain was seminal. I emerged there as one of America's most important and original teachers of art--a reputation solidified by the publication decades later of Interactions of Color, the definitive work on color theory. I remained at Black Mountain until 1950 when I became head of the Department of Design at Yale University School of Art. I remained there until 1958, when he I the position of Visiting Professor until 1960.As a teacher, I influenced many younger American painters, among them Robert Rauschenberg. I used to live a highly disciplined life, always at work. I seldom socialized--much like a cloistered monk; I simply worked. In 1971 I was the first living artist ever to be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.My earliest works were figurative drawings and paintings. My style became increasingly abstract at the Bauhaus where I began to explore abstraction and color, which have endured as primary lifelong preoccupations. I was fascinated by the ambiguities of visual and spatial perception. This preoccupation is central to my famous Homage to the Square series begun in the 1950s and continuing until 1976. In this series, color assumes the main role of producing deceptive and unpredictable effects, causing multiple readings of the same hue depending on what colors surround it. I did not mix colors. Rather, I put the colors on the painting right out of the tube. I force my viewers into a changing and dynamic relationship with my work, rather than accepting one visual truth.
I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V3.6 !
