Josef Albers - At the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Sale

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Josef Albers - GB 2 (From Homage to the Square)

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Josef Albers

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At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971

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About The Work

Josef Albers is affiliated with numerous movements that defined art history in the 20th century. Art Historians credit Albers for fusing elements of American and European abstraction while influencing minimalism, hard-edge painting, and Op art.

Albers was a student and later a professor at the Bauhaus in Germany. After the prestigious academy was closed by the Nazis, Albers and his wife Anni (a noted textile designer) emigrated to the United States.

In addition to being a general influence on many artists, Albers was a significant mentor and taught major artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and Eve Hesse at Black Mountain College and Yale.

In 1971, Albers became the first living artist to be given a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. This important screenprint was produced in tandem with the exhibition and commemorates the historic event.

“Josef Albers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: P-Blue” features Alber's mitered square, a signature motif that explores the relationship between gradient color and our perception of complex geometric structures.

While some of Albers' geometric compositions are straightforward and simply flat, in "Mitered Squares" we are offered a composition to interpret: Are we looking at a recess, with a dark center at the base, or are we looking at a structure with a darkened small square "roof"?

This work is a strong reminder of Albers’ place as one of the most important practitioners of minimalism and hard-edge abstraction.

Courtesy of Caviar20

About Josef Albers

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Josef Albers was a painter, printmaker, photographer, and designer known for his crucial role in developing the Bauhaus, his innovations in Geometric Abstraction, and his explorations into the subjective experience of color. As Albers noted, "When you really understand that each color is changed by a changed environment, you eventually find that you have learned about life as well as about color."

Born in Germany, Albers was a student at the Bauhaus—an institution renowned for its impact on all aspects of modern design—and began working in stained and sandblasted glass, designing windows, furniture, household objects, and typography, as well as publishing poetry and art writing. In 1933 he moved to the United States with his wife, the artist Anni Albers, where he was professor at the noted avant-garde institution Black Mountain College. He has influenced many significant artists including Peter Halley, Donald Judd, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In 1950, Albers began what would be his most famous work, the Homage to the Square series, a body of more than a thousand paintings, drawings, prints, and tapestries, created over a period of twenty-five years. The series was based on a mathematically determined format of several squares, which appear overlapping or within one another.

In 1971, Albers was the first living artist ever to be honored with a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Image courtesy of Susan Sheehan Gallery