Photo, Josef Albers’ drawing class, ca. 1939-1940

In teaching, Albers emphasized the unpredictability of art. In drawing classes that met for three hours twice a week, Albers often spread students’ work on the floor and asked them to explain and justify their choices for assignments.

Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, a branch of the North Carolina State Archives

Manuscript notes from unpublished memoir about Black Mountain College by John Rice, titled “Albers”

Even though Josef Albers did not speak English, John Rice invited him and his wife, Anni, to come to the new college from Germany, where they had both taught at the Bauhaus. Anni Albers was Jewish, and the couple did not wish to stay after the Nazis came to power. Albers immediately began teaching art at Black Mountain College when he arrived in the fall of 1933.

John Andrew Rice Papers, Appalachian State University