Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky: Friends in Exile: A Decade of Correspondence, 1929-1940

In Poems and Drawings, first published in 1958, Josef Albers attempted to penetrate the meaning of art and life by the simplest, most disciplined means. This project was extremely important to Albers, who used its format to create complementary forms in both word and line that appear deceptively simple until they begin to disclose the authorand#8217;s insights into nature, art, and life. Conceived as a kind of artistand#8217;s book, the publication features 22 of Albersand#8217;s refined line drawings alongside the same number of his original poemsand#151;each appearing in both English and German.

Printed initially in a limited edition and long out of print, this new edition of Poems and Drawings replicates Albersand#8217;s original book design and includes four previously unpublished poems that reveal playful and tender details behind Albersand#8217;s personal relationships, along with a new introduction by Nicholas Fox Weber.

For admirers of Albers, Poems and Drawings will provide a closer look at aand#160;celebrated artist who was also an affectionate and articulate writer.

Nicholas Fox Weber, for thirty-four years head of the Albers Foundation, spent many years with Anni and Josef Albers, the only husband-and-wife artistic pair at the Bauhaus (she was a textile artist; he was a professor and an artist, in glass, metal, wood, and photography). The Alberses told him their own stories and described life at the Bauhaus with their fellow artists and teachers, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as with these figures' lesser-known wives and girlfriends.

In this extraordinary group biography, Weber brilliantly brings to life the pioneering art school in Germany's Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s and early 1930s, and captures the spirit and flair with which these Bauhaus geniuses lived, as well as their consuming goal of making art and architecture.

This collection of lively correspondence between friends and artists Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky reveals an intimate picture of their personalities and painterly aspirations over the course of a decade.

Josef Albers (1888andndash;1976) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866andndash;1944), artists and teachers at the Bauhaus, were exiled from Germany when the school was forced to close in the early 1930s. The 46 letters in this volume document the intimate exchange between these two friends in a period when the world was coming apart. Despite the tumult, each wrote to the other of his continuous creative evolution, while also providing rich impressions of his new world. For Kandinsky, this was Paris where he navigated a new avant-garde scene. For Albers, it was the United States where he and his wife Anni began teaching at the recently founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Kandinskyandrsquo;s and Albersandrsquo;s correspondence reveals their warmth and humor, their strength in coping with unexpected circumstances, and above all their conviction in the resilience and power of art. Archival photographs, artwork, and ephemera accompany the collection, which brings together the artistsandrsquo; full extant correspondence for the first time in English and German.and#160;

Josef Albers (1888and#150;1976), one of the most influential artist-educators of the twentieth century, was a member of the Bauhaus group in Germany during the 1920s. In 1933 he came to the United States, where he taught at Black Mountain College for sixteen years. In 1950 he joined the faculty at Yale University as chairman of the Department of Design. Nicholas Fox Weber is Executive Director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.