Josef Albers - Interviewed (1968)

Conducted by Sevim Fesci in New Haven, Connecticut. June 22,1968

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Josef Albers on June 22, 1968. The interview took place in New Haven, Connecticut and was conducted by Sevim Fesci for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

SEVIM FESCI: Before we start to talk about your experiences in the United States and the creative process involved in your work, I would like to ask you a few questions about your childhood.

JOSEF ALBERS: Yes,

SEVIM FESCI: I think your parents were artists themselves? Or --

JOSEF ALBERS: I started once also at the request of some writer to write about my youth. And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything. I was in the workshop and watched him. So as a child so-called art was not my view. That was, in my opinion, my father's job. But I liked to watch him; he comes, as my mother also, from a very craftsman's background. My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theatre and all such nonsense, you know. On my mother's side there was much more heavy craft. They were blacksmiths. They made a speciality horse shoes and nails for them. So, as a child, my main fun was to watch others working. I loved to walk to the neighboring carpenter's place and up to the neighboring shoemaker in my home town.

SEVIM FESCI: Your home town is Bottrop?

JOSEF ALBERS: Bottrop, yes. That is in the Ruhr district. Do you know what the Ruhr is?

SEVIM FESCI: Yes. Very industrial.

JOSEF ALBERS: That is the Pittsburgh of Westphalia, of Germany. But a hundred times bigger; a hundred Pittsburghs all together. One never sees a boundary between the cities. And everywhere there are mines and furnaces and metal melting there. It was loud and very dirty, and unpleasantly ugly. The whole region is. Except at night when you go on the train through that country the fireworks are just incredible. So that's where I came from.

SEVIM FESCI: And you didn't feel at all the urge to draw or to paint as a child?

JOSEF ALBERS: Well, not to produce, as I said, so-called art. That was not my idea. My father painted all those stage sets, you see. I found in the woods little mushrooms. And I learned very early how to make imitation of wood grain. This is something I have in common with Braque. Braque also learned very early from his father how to imitate marble or wood grain. So I could easily make the appearance of oak or walnut on pine. That is very easy; a very simple technique. And I learned how to imitate marble. I never made such a good joke as Braque died. When he was in the Mediterranean he fooled his friends. He painted a rowboat that had wood on one side and marble on the other side. You see, when he'd row out of the city it looked as if he were in a boat of a different material than when he came back, you see, one side was imitation wood and the other side was imitation marble.