Museum Folkwang Collection Online
Homage to the Square, White Island
  • Josef Albers
  • Homage to the Square, White Island, 1961

  • Oil on hardboard
  • 121,5 x 121,5 cm
  • Acquired in 1967 with support of the Eugen-und-Agnes-von-Waldthausen-Platzhoff-Museums-Stiftung und der Alfried-Krupp-von-Bohlen-und-Halbach-Stiftung
  • Inv. G 355
  • On view
  • CommentaryAlbers had already been working in his first job as teacher when he took up art. His artistic training led him to Essen, where he attended the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule (later Folkwangschule), Berlin and Munich as well as to the Bauhaus in Weimar (from 1920); there he was taught by Johannes Itten among others. After Itten’s departure, Albers took of the direction of the preliminary course at taught in the so-called texture studies. In the USA where he emigrated in 1933, Albers taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (to 1949) and at Yale University in New Haven/Connecticut. Among his American students were Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse and Richard Serra, to name but a few.

    In the series ›Homage to a Square‹, begun in 1950 Albers took up the theme of optical perception of colors and their interaction in various combinations – a scientific and artistic question which he also explored theoretically (›Interaction of Color‹, 1963). The two-dimensional construction of ›Homage to the Square‹, for which Albers defined four variations and five formats, results from a vertically centered but horizontally downwardly shifted arrangement of different colored squares of various sizes. The colors give rhythm to the progressive staggering of squares and give them a spatial quality.
    The artist and teacher Josef Albers is today seen as one of the most important intermediary between European Avant-garde abstract painting before the Second War and US art after 1945 – color field painting, ‘hard edge painting and minimalism.
  • Provenance1967: Josef Albers, New Haven, Conn.
  • Obj_Id: 3,231
  • Obj_Internet_S: ja
  • Obj_Ownership_S (Verantw):Painting, Sculpture, Media Art
  • Obj_SpareNField01_N (Verantw):
  • Obj_Creditline_S: Gemäldesammlung
  • Obj_Title1_S: Homage to the Square, White Island
  • Obj_Title2_S:
  • Obj_PartDescription_S (Titelerg):
  • Obj_SpareMField01_M (Alle Titel): Homage to the Square, White Island
  • Obj_Dating_S: 1961
  • Jahr von: 1,961
  • Jahr bis: 1,961
  • Obj_IdentNr_S: G 355
  • Obj_IdentNrSort_S: G 0355
  • Obj_Classification_S (Objtyp): Painting
  • Obj_Crate_S: 121,5 x 121,5 cm
  • Obj_Material_S: Oil on hardboard
  • Obj_Technique_S:
  • Obj_SpareSField01_S (Mat./Tech.): Oil on hardboard
  • Obj_AccNote_S (Erwerb): Acquired in 1967 with support of the Eugen-und-Agnes-von-Waldthausen-Platzhoff-Museums-Stiftung und der Alfried-Krupp-von-Bohlen-und-Halbach-Stiftung
  • Obj_PermanentLocation_S (Standort): On view
  • Obj_Condition1_S (Druckerei):
  • Obj_Condition2_S (Auflage):
  • Obj_Subtype_S (Genre):
  • Obj_Rights_S: © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Artists
Commentary
Provenance
Josef Albers
* 1888 Deutschland - † 1976 USA