SOUTHBANK CENTRE

Josef Albers - Screenprints

As an artist and teacher, Josef Albers (1888-1976) exerted an enormous influence on modern art in Europe and America.  He taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar until its closure by the Nazis in 1933.  He then went on to become one of the most influential art teachers in the USA, firstly at the Black Mountain College and later at Yale.  He is best known for his series of paintings, lithographs and screenprints, 'Homage to the Square', and for his treatise, 'Interaction Of Color', 1963.

This exhibition, drawn from a portfolio of screenprints produced in close collaboration with the artist in 1972, includes variants of many of his most famous images.

It shows how he developed his ideas by working in series - foreshadowing the American minimalists - creating multiple variations on his major themes. In the 'Homages' (1950-75) he aimed to demonstrate that colour is an entirely relative phenomenon, that colours change according to their juxtaposition and relationships with other colours and tones. The squares perform 'optical reversals', creating the illusion of a receding tunnel or protruding three-dimensional shape.

Albers was constantly exploring optical contradictions in his work. In his architecturally-inspired 'Graphic Techtonics' (1941-42), inward or upward movement was brought about through juxtapositions of thick and thin lines, placed closer together or further apart.  In a similar way, the linear geometry of his 'Structural Constellations' (1949-76) made forms appear simultaneously flat and three-dimensional.  He played with the pictorial plane, making it appear to unfold first one way and then another.  In his 'Variants' (1947-55), he carried further than ever before his idea of a series of works in which the form remains constant or alters only slightly while the colours change radically. Each of these series is well represented in this selection of 60-70 high-quality screenprints.


Tour Details:

6 - 31 January 2009
Island Arts Centre, Lisburn 

14 February - 15 March 2009
AVAILABLE

21 March - 19 April 2009
AVAILABLE

25 April - 24 May 2009
Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge 


Tour continues

Category C

Image: Josef Albers 'Observe that a prism fits geometrically in to a square and thus constructs the letter ’Z’ Portfolio 2, folder 16 from Formulation: Articulation' © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation