Josef Albers

Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private Collection, Milan
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Instantly recognisable as Josef Albers’ iconic dissection of painting into form and colour, Study for Homage to the Square: Framed Sky ‘C’ represents a striking example of the artist’s most iconic body of work. His ongoing interest in the study of the square, undoubtedly influenced by his long and distinguished career as a teacher (starting as a professor at the Bauhaus in the 1920s), is perfectly embodied in this celebrated series of paintings, in which the endless visual possibilities of the relationships between the square and its colour are explored.
Study for Homage to the Square is the result of decades of creative and academic research that first materialised in 1950 at the age of sixty-two and was continually developed by the artist until his death twenty-six years later. The thoroughly methodological approach that Albers rigorously applied throughout this series was characterised by a self-imposed set of compositional rules that dictated the position of each square. With their carefully balanced downward evolution, the artist added weight and a sense of movement to the composition which was further emphasised by the optical effects achieved by the interaction of the colours. As the artist explains; “although all the colors are only in contact at their edges and never overlap or intersect others, so that, physically, they are only presented frontally, side by side on the same plane, in action we see the colors as being in front or behind one another, over or under one another, as covering one or more colors entirely or in part. They give the illusion of being transparent or translucent and tend to move up or down” (Josef Albers quoted in: Eugen Gomringer, Josef Albers, New York 1967, p. 138).
In Study for Homage to the Square: Framed Sky ‘C’  the interaction of the colours creates a representational effect that is rare in Albers’ oeuvre. As the title suggests, the outer grey squares suggest a rectangular opening in a ceiling that reveals a clear blue sky - exactly as in a James Turrell installation. This makes the present work not only an outstanding example of the artist’s extensive exploration of colour relationships, but indeed a fascinating image in its own right that hovers between abstraction and a suggestion of figuration.