- 8
Josef Albers
Description
- Josef Albers
- Study to Homage to the Square: Green Opening
- signed with the artist's monogram and dated 58; signed, titled, dated 1958 and variously inscribed on the reverse
- oil on masonite
- 50.8 by 50.8 cm. 20 by 20 in.
Provenance
Private Collection, London
Condition
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
As a theorist, professor, and artist, Josef Albers’ contribution to the avant-garde in America and Europe, cannot be overstated. Having previously played a decisive role in the development of the Bauhaus, in 1933 he became head of the painting program at Black Mountain College. Here he taught artists like Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg, each of whom would come to play a decisive role in the development of Italy’s school of post-war and contemporary art; Twombly through his years spent in Rome, and Rauschenberg through his close relationships of mutual influence with artists like Alberto Burri and Piero Manzoni. Perhaps even more pertinently, from 1949 onwards, Albers was engaged in the Homage to the Square series, of which the present work is a worthy exemplar. These works were some of the earliest and most sincere attempts to explore artistic notions of colour through monochrome passages deployed in flat juxtaposition. They are amongst the most influential paintings of the post-war period, inspiring a cohort of the most important artists of the 1960s and 1970s and, in 1971, serving to make Albers the first living artist to be afforded a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Italian terms, Albers’ essays on colour provided the fertile ground from which such artists like Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, and Ettore Spaletti could grow. Each of these artists’ oeuvre was fundamentally engaged with the optical effects of chromatic contrast; each of them built upon the theorems and proofs expounded through Albers’ paradigm-shifting praxis.
As part of the Homage to the Square series, the present work is the product of a meticulous painterly and geometric process. Ranging in size from 16 by 16 inches to 48 by 48 inches, the paintings employ four possible variations on a rigid concentric schema; the first formal configuration contains four squares while the remaining three compositional types contain three squares in different arrangements. In executing his works according to these arrangements, Albers was at pains to completely deny the physical characteristics of oil-paint. He applied his pigment in smooth homogenous layers using a palette knife, and used Masonite as his ground, so as to create a completely smooth surface. All of these measures were undertaken so as to give his viewer a totally unmediated and undistracted appreciation of the colour palette that Albers had chosen. Works from Albers’ Homage to the Square series are sensuous and mesmeric, but above all they are purposive. In each example of the series, Albers set out to prove that our perception of colour is subjective, transient, and malleable, by manipulating our interpretations using a virtuosic array of chromatic contrasts and combinations. The legacy of his work as artist, teacher, and theorist resounded through the Twentieth Century, resonating in particular with Italian artists, who built on his revolutionary colour theory to produce their own extraordinary avant-garde.