199: JOSEF ALBERS, WLS III from White Line Squares (Series I) < Prints + Multiples, 26 February 2020 < Auctions

Prints + Multiples 26 February 2020

Gemini G.E.L.

Since its founding in 1966, Gemini G.E.L. has been a destination of innovative printmaking and creative collaboration. An “invite only” workshop, Gemini has produced editioned work with an array of artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, and Julie Mehretu. Fifty years after its inception, Gemini continues to publish exclusive, high-quality works and push the boundaries of printmaking.

We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

Josef Albers

Josef Albers 1888–1976

From a young age, Josef Albers possessed an innate interest in glass and color. His father was a painter, and as a child, Albers loved to watch his father create. Albers commenced his formal training in art under the Dutch glass artist Jan Thorn-Prikker, who was a former follower of Henry Van der Velde. Beginning his studies at the Bauhaus in 1920, Albers quickly became involved in new experimentations in glass and painting. While he was a student, Albers began dating Anni Fleischmann, a talented student in textiles at the Bauhaus and in 1925 the two married. That same year, Josef became the Bauhaus master, the first student to hold the position.

The Albers moved to the United States in 1933, leaving Germany due to the rise of the Nazi Party. The architect, Philip Johnson recommended Josef Albers for a position at the newly formed Black Mountain College. Albers headed the progressive school’s art program and while director he taught many of the most celebrated American artists of the twentieth century, including Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, and others. In 1949, Albers left Black Mountain College to serve as the Chairman of the Design department at Yale. It was there that he executed his most famous series of paintings entitled Homage to a Square.

Throughout the 1960s, Albers received several commissions to craft murals for new architectural projects; notably, in 1963, he completed a monumental abstract mural for the Pan Am building in New York. In 1971, five years before his death, Albers was the first living artist to be honored with a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Auction Results Josef Albers