Equal and Unequal – Lecture on Josef and Anni Albers by Nicholas Fox Weber

Josef Albers, one of the most prominent representatives of geometric abstraction and one of the leading colour theorists, began his career as a teacher at the Bauhaus. After the school closed in 1933, he and his wife Anni Albers, a textile artist, immigrated to the United States. In the USA, Josef Albers worked as an educator of the Black Mountain College, laying the foundation for the vision of such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson.

Nicholas Fox Weber was a close friend of the Alberses, who has been entrusted with their estate. While the title of his lecture, Equal and Unequal, refers to a painting with the same title from 1939, it can also be taken to allude not only to aesthetic issues, but also to the artists’ special relationship to one another.

In his lecture, Weber pays particular attention to the Alberses’ Hungarian connections (including their ties to – and occasional debates or disputes with – Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Otti Berger and Victor Vasarely, among others).

The guests were welcomed by Dávid Fehér (Director of KEMKI); the lecture was introduced by Balázs Zoltán Tóth, museologist and photo-historian (KEMKI, ADK).