The exhibition is the first to show such a concentration of paintings on paper by Josef Albers, some of which will be completely unknown to the general public. Works in oil on paper, painted by the artist since the 1940s in preparation for the »Adobe« and »Variant« series in particular, will be presented together with a large group related to his principal work »Homage to the Square« from the artist’s late period, that he focused on from 1950 until his death in 1976.

Josef Albers was only able to fully develop into an important artist and influential teacher after emigrating to the USA. >From around 1940 onwards, Albers was inspired by Mexico’s pre-Columbian architecture, scultpure and textile art that boosted his sense for the aesthetic and led to idiosynchratic, radiant colour compositions, the likes of which had never been seen at that time in European modern art. Around 1950, Albers discovered what was for him the ideal formal shape of colour – the square.

The works exhibited surprise the viewer with their spontaneity, their search for immediacy and the extraordinary delicacy of their colours. Albers studied the interaction of colours like virtually no other. Through his works on paper in particular it can be seen in detail how the artist achieved such a thorough osmosis of plane and space through increasing the density of the colours used.

The exhibition will subsequently be staged at the Albers Museum Quadrat, Bottrop, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, the Kupferstichkabinett Basel, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon, and The Morgan Library and Museum, New York.

Exhibition catalogue published by Hatje Cantz. With contributions by Isabelle Dervaux, Heinz Liesbrock, Michael Semff.

ISBN 978-3-7757-2587-3; c. 192 pages, c. 130 colour and 6 black-and-white illustrations.