Born in Bottrop, Albers started to work as an art teacher and printmaker. He was commissioned a stained glass window for a local church in Essen and studied in Munich and Weimar. He entered the Bauhaus in 1922 as a stain glass maker. Only two years later he was asked to join as master of preliminary course. He became friends with artists such as Klee and Kandinsky, until the Bauhaus closed its doors in 1933. As other artists of that entourage, Albers was invited in the US to develop the visual arts department of the Black Mountain College of North Carolina. In 1950 Albers moved to Connecticut taking on the role of Chairman of Department of Design at Yale University School of Art. In 1963 he published Interaction of Colour – the most influential compendium of his colour theory and result of his series Homages to the Square and Structural Constellations. Albers worked on prints, drawings, murals, until his death in 1976.