Josef Albers in America:
Painting on Paper

CLOSES OCTOBER 14, 2012

New York, NY, September 24, 2012—Josef Albers (1888–1976) is best known for his series of paintings Homage to the Square, in which he repeatedly explored color relationships within a similar format of concentric squares. Much less familiar, however, are the vibrant painted studies on paper that he made for these and other paintings. Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper is entirely devoted to this aspect of the artist’s work, featuring approximately eighty such studies spanning the four decades after Albers left Nazi Germany and immigrated to the United States.

The exhibition includes Albers's studies for abstract geometric compositions from the late 1930s; studies for the Variant / Adobe series from the 1940s; and over fifty works related to the Homage to the Square series (1950–1976). These vibrant sketches—never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime and rarely seen after his death—provide important insight into Albers’s working method and, in contrast to the austerity and strict geometry of the finished paintings, are remarkable for their freedom and sensuality.

Read the full press release here.

Press contacts:

Patrick Milliman
pmilliman@themorgan.org
212-590-0310

Alanna Schindewolf
aschindewolf@themorgan.org
212-590-0311

Images:

Josef Albers (1888–1976)
Color Study for White Line Square, not dated
Oil on blotting paper (with gouache, pencil, and varnish)
29.53 x 29.66 cm
© 2012 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society New York
Digital Image by Imaging 4 Art
inv. no. 1976.2.22

Josef Albers (1888–1976)
Variant / Adobe, 1947
Oil on blotting paper
48.3 x 60.9 cm
© 2012 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society New York
Digital Image by Imaging 4 Art
inv. no. 1976.2.111