Friedrich Fröbel, founder of the kindergartens, recognized paper binding, weaving, folding, and cutting as teaching aids for child development during the early 19th century. As the kindergarten system spread throughout Europe and into the rest of the world, it brought with it the small colored squares that we know of today as origami paper. Josef Albers, the father of modern color theory and minimalistic art, taught origami and paper folding in the 1920s and 30s at the famous Bauhaus design school.