"And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything"
About this Quote
The pivot to the father is doing heavy cultural lifting. A "house painter and decorative painter" isn’t fine art’s glamorous lineage, but it’s the infrastructure of seeing: surfaces, finishes, deception, durability. Stage sets and glass paintings sit right at the border between illusion and construction, the place where an image is literally built to function. Albers is quietly arguing that art begins as problem-solving with materials, not self-expression. The phrase "he made everything" lands like a manifesto of versatility: the maker who refuses the preciousness of a single medium, the kind of competency Bauhaus modernism would later elevate into ideology.
There’s also a class subtext. Albers positions his formation in a working world where art is not separated from trade, where making is a family economy. It’s not sentimentality; it’s authorization. If your father paints walls and sets, you learn early that color is physical, that perception is engineered, and that craft can be as intellectually rigorous as any academy. In that sense, the anecdote reads like a quiet origin for his later obsession with how color behaves: not a childhood dream, but a disciplined apprenticeship in how appearances are made.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Albers, Josef. (2026, January 15). And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-i-started-with-this-i-have-not-painted-at-all-164054/
Chicago Style
Albers, Josef. "And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-i-started-with-this-i-have-not-painted-at-all-164054/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-i-started-with-this-i-have-not-painted-at-all-164054/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.
