AMO for Albers x Blēo

For the collaboration with Blēo, a surface and color house in Copenhagen, the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation invited AMO to curate a palette of colors. This first collection is derived from six of the original plates that appear in Josef Albers's seminal publication Interaction of Color. After a process of rigorous testing and revision, more than 200 hues were reduced to a collection of 29 colors. The result is an exploration of the nuanced tones and energetic shades from the illustrations found in the book, all with a distinctive sense of energy. The Josef Albers Color Interactions Palette is an invitation to use and understand colors through one's own senses, and to feel truly liberated in doing so.

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Josef Albers (1888-1976) was not just an artist, he was a visionary educator and designer whose teachings continue to shape our understanding of color. Josef and his equally influential partner, the artist Anni Albers (née Fleischmann), met at the Bauhaus—where he was one of the first students to be appointed a master. Following the rise of Nazism in Germany, they emigrated to the United States in 1933 when Josef was invited to join the faculty at the pioneering Black Mountain College. While teaching at Black Mountain, and then at Yale University, Albers continued to develop his experiential methods—culminating in Interaction of Color, which he dedicated to his students.

Fascinated by color deception and relativity, Albers encouraged readers to experiment. His philosophy of openness was a throughline in both his work and teaching, and is one that continues to resonate with and influence generations of artists, designers, students and teachers.

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