Albers_Mephisto_Self-Portrait

 

Albers was born on March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, a small industrial

mining city in the Ruhr region of Westphalia, its air so clogged with

coal smoke that he used to say, “Even my spit was black.” His family

was working class; no one had advanced education…

Albers claimed his humble origins as the key to his talents. He considered

the menial skills he had been taught growing up vital to what he

subsequently became, and he wore his heritage as a badge of pride.

–The Bauhaus Group Six Masters of Modernism