Paul Klee essentially developed his theory of art during his time at the Bauhaus. In 1920, in his book on the theory of art, ‘Creative Confession’, he stated, ‘Art does not reproduce the visible but makes it visible.’ Many other essays and lectures on art education and theory followed, while Klee taught at the Bauhaus: about the study of nature, the creative mindset and form theory. In 1925, the foundations of his design theory were published as the second of the Bauhaus books (‘Pedagogical Sketchbook’). Klee’s colour and form theories were an elementary part of the preliminary course. Their contents reached the majority of Bauhaus students between 1921 and 1931.

Influenced by the theories of Goethe, Runge, Delacroix and Kandinsky, Klee developed his own colour theory based on a six-part rainbow shaped into a colour wheel. He placed the complementary colours in relation to movements that interact with one another, which shows this theory is based on dynamic transitions. For Klee, because art and theory were inseparably linked, the element of movement flowed into the compositions of his colour gradations and Quadrat (square) paintings.

In the nine lessons of his form theory, Klee explored works of art with regard to ‘the stages of [their] creation’. The point that sets itself in motion stood at the beginning of his considerations and the movement of colour as part of this process at their conclusion. As a master of form, Klee was initially the head of the bookbinding workshop. Due to his experiences with reverse painting on glass, he subsequently became the head of the glass-painting workshop. From 1923, he was head of the course Elementary design theory of surfaces for the second semester. At times, he also taught life drawing. In Dessau, from 1926, Klee taught a painting class at his own request. In 1927, he also taught form theory in the weaving workshop after the departure of Georg Muche, where he taught his colour theory and gave lessons on the design of surfaces. His teaching aspired to the ‘development of multiplicity into unity’. Klee’s influence on the expression of form in the weaving workshop played a large role in shaping this workshop.

In his approach to art, Klee attempted to avoid dogma of all kinds. He aimed to teach the foundations of colour and form to the students so that they could continue to work with these elements on an individual basis. There were no difficult discussions about radical life concepts of the sort entertained by Johannes Itten, because Klee always strove for harmony. Due to his pleasant but profound way of imparting knowledge, he was known at the Bauhaus as the ‘magician’.

Josef Albers entered the room, carrying with him a bunch of newspapers. … then addressed us … “Ladies and gentlemen, we are poor, not rich. We can’t afford to waste materials or time. … All art starts with a material, and therefore we have first to investigate what our material can do. So, at the beginning we will experiment without aiming at making a product. At the moment we prefer cleverness to beauty. … Our studies should lead to constructive thinking. … I want you now to take the newspapers … and try to make something out of them that is more than you have now. I want you to respect the material and use it in a way that makes sense — preserve its inherent characteristics. If you can do without tools like knives and scissors, and without glue, the better.

Josef Albers believed that teaching art was not a matter of imparting rules, styles, or techniques, but of leading students to a greater awareness of what they were seeing. Albers said his goal as a teacher was "to open eyes." For Albers, the fundamental building block of an art education was development of the capacity to see more acutely. You can’t be an artist, Albers reasoned, unless and until you’d mindfully explored the visual field through its key elements: line, shape, color, and texture.

Albers taught courses in design and drawing at the Bauhaus. At Black Mountain College, he gave courses in those same subjects as well as in color and painting. When he assumed the chairmanship of the Department of Design at Yale, Albers scrapped the existing curriculum and replaced it with instruction in the fundamentals of design, drawing, and color. His workshops at the Harvard School of Design, his instruction as visiting professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany, and his many workshops and courses in schools and universities across the United States and in Latin America were devoted entirely to these same subjects.

Albers’s approach relied on direct observation and self-discovery. His classes were peppered with analyses of such commonplace phenomena as New York City streetlights, monuments in the park, and insect anatomy. Absorbed in visual phenomena, he would point out what others had perhaps viewed cursorily but not contemplated: the shape of the Yale football stadium, the spot of light that remains for a moment when a TV set is switched off, the way a red roof could merge with a blue sky, how the color of tea deepened in a glass. Albers was, as his paintings and graphics reveal, profoundly sensitive to the formal relationships of things, intensely conscious that everything in the visual field exists in a context, and that every line and color affects adjacent line and colors.

What do we actually see? How well do we see it? How can we translate our discoveries into meaningful work? Albers felt that these concerns, rather than theories about form, should be the focus of art training.

Accordingly, his lessons introduced his students to an often-unseen visual reality. Through a battery of simple freehand line exercises, students discovered that lines and shapes formed relationships, established rhythms and tensions, pushed and pulled. By drawing their names in reverse, by imitating newspaper text, or by drawing the block letters or numbers they had seen all their lives, they began to recognize that these were forms having distinct character. Writing their names in reverse or upside down, drawing letterforms, or carefully recording the shapes they saw between the rungs of chairs, they became aware of "negative" or "unfilled" shapes. Painting the spaces between milk bottles, oranges, or the leaves of plantsreinforced the lesson that the space is never merely "empty." By constructing with simple materials, such as paper or wire, students learned that the hollows and voids were as important as the solids. Juxtaposing colors, or combining disparate materials in assemblages, they learned to recognize the influence of one element upon another. The laboratory-like simplicity of the exercises made it possible to observe the smallest, subtlest events in the visual field—the precise shade of a color, the exact nature of a curve, or the character of a paper’s torn edge.

Probably no one has surpassed Albers in finding ways to develop visual skills. His exercises were powerful tools of his pedagogy. But his sense of wonder, coupled with his remarkable ability to share his visual world with others, animated whatever he touched. Albers was imbued with the Bauhaus imperative that art and life are of a piece, but he put his own spin on the concept. "Learn to see and to feel life," he wrote, "cultivate imagination, because there are still marvels in the world, because life is a mystery and always will be. But be aware of it. . . . Art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, to cultivate vision."