Either. . . Or

1933–1949

Black Mountain summer seminars and famous pupils

To Black Mountain's summer seminars Albers invited leading American artists to teach — Willem de Kooning, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, the Harlem Renaissance painter Jacob Lawrence. His students included Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Susan Weil; Rauschenberg, despite their often combative relationship, later named Albers his most important teacher. In these years Albers made many woodcuts and leaf studies.

1933–1949

Employed by: Black Mountain College

1950

Moves to Yale and builds its graphic design program

In 1950 Albers left Black Mountain to head the department of design at Yale University in New Haven. He expanded the nascent graphic design program, hiring Alvin Eisenman, Herbert Matter and Alvin Lustig; his Yale students included Richard Anuszkiewicz, Eva Hesse, Neil Welliver and Jane Davis Doggett.

1950

Elaine de Kooning writes on Albers

In an article on the artist, Elaine de Kooning concluded that however impersonal his paintings might at first appear, not one of them could have been painted by anyone but Josef Albers himself.