“It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe, you see. To be a painter was terrible.”

Date Issued: 1980-09-12 Homage to the Square: Glow postage stamp by Josef Albers.

This stamp commemorated American education and the early establishment of the U.S. Department of Education. The design of this stamp is taken from a painting by Josef Albers, a German -born artist who contributed much to modern art through his investigation of color and light perception. Albers came to the United States in 1933 to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He later taught at Yale. The culmination of Albers’ artistic development is seen in his famous Homage to the Square series, on which he worked from 1949 until his death in 1976.