Josef Albers

Eugen Gombringer

Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1985

Danilowitz 203

The Homages operate like doors—physically, optically, psychologically, and metaphorically. They are entrances, exits, and thresholds, beginnings and endings. Sometimes it is not clear on which side of the door we are. The door opens both out and in, onto the past, the present, and onto an endless, inescapable theoretical infinity. There is no first or last. And the possibilities are both limited and limitless.

Kelly Feeney, Josef Albers: Works on Paper, Virginia 1991, p. 86

Created in 1970, Homage to the Square (Edition Keller I) is a resplendent iteration of Josef Albers’ seminal and most celebrated series. First conceived in 1949, Albers’ Homages were the product of a meticulous geometric process. The subject occupied the artist for 25 years, resulting in over 2,000 works defined by their unmitigating adherence to the square as an artistic formula exemplifying an eradication of variation in space, form and shape in favour of extensive explorations of tone, intensity and hue.

Albers’ vast research into the nature of colour was firmly embedded in his belief that colour is never to be understood from a purely theoretical perspective but also in terms of its psychological effect. While Goethe’s famous colour circle was derived hierarchically from the wisdom of natural science, Albers emphasised an approach that was based on dialogue, juxtaposition, and above all experimentation. In the introduction to his famous book, ‘Interaction of Color’, Albers wrote: “The aim… is to develop – through experience – by trial and error – an eye for colour. This means, specifically, seeing colour action as well as feeling colour relatedness.”

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, New Haven 2006, p. 1

Albers’ radical juxtaposition of colour theory and rigorous formalism positioned his practice as one of the most influential of the twentieth century. As a student and later teacher at the Bauhaus, Albers developed his theories alongside Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy. Upon his move to the United States, Albers would become one of the leading figures of the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina, working alongside Robert Motherwell and teaching young artists such as Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. Albers later taught at Yale University, where his students included Eva Hesse. Indeed, the influence of Albers’ teaching philosophy and his own pedagogic practice can be traced throughout the pantheon of post-war American art, from former pupil Mark Rothko's absorptive oil paintings through to the immersive chromatic spaces created by Dan Flavin's neon light installations.

The present example of Homage to the Square (Edition Keller I) comes from the collection of renowned object designer, Wolf Karnagel. Several of Karnagel’s designs form part of important museum collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Dresden State Art Collection.

Karnagel acquired Homage to the Square (Edition Keller I) over four decades ago from Eugen Gombringer, author of the monograph Josef Albers: His Work as Contribution to Visual Articulation in the Twentieth Century. Through Karnagel’s friendship with Gombringer and his connections to the Bauhaus, he came to know Albers, Lucio Fontana and Walter Gropius, among many other titans of twentieth-century art, design and architecture.