Josef Albers in Mexico. The Bauhaus in Search of Its Pre-Hispanic Origins

Abstract

With the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, Anni and Josef Albers established themselves at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. At a remove from Nazi Germany, the couple fulfilled their long-standing desire to travel through Mexico, visiting the country fourteen times between 1935 and 1967. This chapter analyses the impact that Mexico and the pre-Columbian architecture had in the art of Josef Albers. Revisiting a lecture delivered by Albers at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1937 (“Truthfulness in Art”), the article traces back the spiritual origin of his series Homage to the Square (1950-76) to his encounter with the woven walls of Mitla, Oaxaca, where he initiated a chromatic Bauhausian journey to the center of pre-Columbian ritual architecture.