“The window is a real grid, a given grid, the panes like my lines across it. We were suspending these images in light, glass, air, atmosphere, these colors floating."
Brice Marden

I n 1977, Brice Marden received a commission from the Basel Cathedral Stained Glass Trust to design a set of stained glass windows for Basel Cathedral. Though the project was never realized after eight years of work, Marden’s studies for the window designs – as seen in the present work – endure as a significant turning point in his artistic practice. Marden worked on the project tirelessly from 1978 to 1985 and used the project as a vehicle by which to explore his interests in alchemy, the self, and the universe’s primordial foundations.