JOSEF ALBERS VINTAGE MODERN LIMITED EDITION CERAMIC PLATTER PLATE MUSEUM OF ART

Description: RARE COLLECTABLE MODERN ART CERAMIC PLATTER BY INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN REVERED PAINTER JOSEF ALBERS. (German-American 1888-1976) THIS WORK IS TITLED: STUDY FOR THE HOMMAGE TO THE SQUARE. LIMITED EDITION, THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART , LOS ANGELES. c1999. NEW IN THE BOX DIMENSIONS: 15 1/4 Josef Albers (1888 - 1976) was active/lived in Connecticut, North Carolina / Germany. Josef Albers is known for Serial geometric, non objective painting. Josef Albers Born: 1888 - Bottrop, Germany Died: 1976 - New Haven, Connecticut Josef Albers (1888 - 1976), was a German artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching modern art education programs of the 20th century. IF DIVERSIFICATION is often the undoing of a minor talent, this retrospective of Josef Albers at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (March 25 thru May 29) shows how it can strengthen and eventually serve to focus the mature vision of a master. The first major retrospective of Albers's work, this exhibition of about 250 pieces (covering his output from 1914 to 1976) allows for a long view of the man and his oeuvre. What we get here is the complex and arduous struggle which occupied Albers from roughly his 25th to his 60th year and which culminated in the deceptive simplicity of his Homage to the Square, a series of well over a thousand paintings executed during the final twenty-five years of his life and which earned him the epithet, "the square man." A small poem that Albers wrote in his Poems and Drawings (Wittenborn, 1961), rather neatly sums up his philosophy: Easyto know that diamondsare precious goodto learn that rubieshave depth but moreto see that pebblesare miraculous. A quiet, self-effacing man, Albers had the self-discipline and single-minded dedication to eschew the popular, the easy paths to fame and success, and to follow his own lead. Ignoring the "diamonds" and "rubies" already discovered by others and capitalized upon in the art world, Albers sought the "pebbles," the often over-looked elemental qualities of art that lent it its universality, its endurance. Eventually, Albers would decide that it was color or, more properly speaking, light that in the final analysis was the building block of art. Born in 1888 in Bottrop, Germany, Josef Albers was most proud of his inheritance of an appreciation for and fine sense of craftsmanship derived from his father, a laborer in the Ruhr River region, and his mother, the daughter of a line of blacksmiths. Throughout his life, he never strayed far from the belief that, at bottom, craft preceded "art." An early beginning in the usual academic art schooling did not long hold Albers from going his own way. His drawings of 1915-18, after his return from the Konigliche Kuntschule in Berlin, show an early predilection for minimal statement. Technically precise, they show a no-nonsense, spare rendition of the essential elements of his subjects. Although detail would present no problem to this most competent draftsman, he preferred to keep his work as simple as possible. Throughout, it is difficult to "see" Albers in his work. Thoroughly detached, he allowed for no interference of non-aesthetic considerations to encumber his art. Albers's affiliation with the Bauhaus is a well documented period of his life; everyone knows that he spent more time there than did anyone else (from 1920 to 1933). From his beginning as a student (who almost was dropped because of his refusal to study wall painting), through his being asked to set up a new glass workshop (on the strength of his work with glass shards he was gleaning from the town dump) and on through to his becoming a master and assistant director, it is clear that the Bauhaus was as good for Albers as he was for it. One can easily see that the Bauhaus's famous dictum of "Less is More" was in complete harmony with Albers's own bent. His influence on other artists both here, and later at the Black Mountain college in North Carolina and, finally, at Yale, is also well known. Albers brought to his teaching the same dedication that he brought to his art; again, his sense of craft and technique served him well in his methods of instruction. It was the Nazi closing of the school in 1933 that led to Albers's emigration to the United States. The exhibit well documents Albers's output over the years including paintings, works on paper, glass assemblages and constructions, furniture, photographs and photo-collages. If, as I have noted, there is an amazing diversification in Albers's work, one can yet follow the path of simplification he took. And, once he settled upon his study with color, one can see the same single-minded diligence to craft that would occupy and guide him until his death. Although Albers did not acknowledge any great debts to any of his contemporaries or for that matter to any of his predecessors he did admit that it was Cézanne who made the largest impact on his sensibilities. If we can see some hint of this influence in some of his earlier work, it is undoubtedly most seen in his grasp of Cézanne's innovations with color and his pioneering efforts of using it to suggest depth. It was the series Homage to the Square that brought Josef Albers to wide public attention and was, in fact, the core of his one-man retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971. This, incidentally, was the first such honor given to a living artist at that institution. It was in this series that Albers brought the full powers of his study of color (light) into sharp focus. The square form (called "platters" by Albers) was chosen since it would offer the least interference with his wish to "serve up" to the viewer's attention the interaction of color combinations. It was also the Homage to the Square series which lay at the heart of his course on color at Yale and which served as the basis for his book, Interaction of Color, published in 1963. An electronic version of Interaction of Color, produced by Jerry Whitely and Andrew Phelan for Pratt Institute can be seen in conjunction with the exhibit. A full catalog, Josef Albers, has been co-published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. In addition to a full chronology and catalog of the exhibition, the book contains essays by Nicholas Fox Weber, Mary Emma Harris, Charles E. Rickart and Neal Benezra. The show was mounted with the help of grants from the BASF Corporation and the Federal Republic of Germany. Museums: Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury, CT) Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA) Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY) Art Museum of Sao Paulo, Bern (Bern, United States) Artists Rights Society (New York City, NY) Ball State University Museum of Art (Muncie, IN) Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL) Boca Raton Museum of Art (Boca Raton, FL) Busch-Reisinger Museum-Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) California African American Museum (Los Angeles, CA) Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh, PA) Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA) Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH) Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, ME) Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO) Flint Institute of Arts (Flint, MI) Florence Museum (Florence, SC) Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA) Greenville County Museum of Art (Greenville, SC) High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC) Jack S Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX) Jonson Gallery of University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM) Lauren Rogers Museum of Art (Laurel, MS) Library Of Congress (Culpeper, VA) McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX) Mead Art Museum (Amherst, MA) Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, TN) Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY) Miami Art Museum (Miami, FL) Michael C Carlos Museum (Atlanta, GA) Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO) Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA) Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm (Stockholm, Sweden) National Gallery of Victoria - Australia (Melbourne, Australia) National Gallery-Berlin (Berlin, United States) National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian (Washington, DC) Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY) Newfields (Indianapolis, IN) North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC) Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL) Reynolda House-Museum of American Art (Winston-Salem, NC) Robert Hull Fleming Museum (Burlington, VT) San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, CA) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA) (San Francisco, CA) Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE) Simon Fraser University Collection (Burnaby, BC) Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA) Snite Museum of Art (Notre Dame, IN) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, NY) Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (Loretto, PA) Tate Britain (London, England) The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD) The Chazen (Elvehjem) Museum of Art (Madison, WI) The Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, NH) The Dayton Art Institute (Dayton, OH) The Grace Museum (Abilene, TX) The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, FL) The Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, SC) The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO) The Newark Museum (Newark, NJ) The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC) The Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH) The University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ) The University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI) Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT) Wallrof Richartz Museum (Koln, Germany) Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN) Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT)

Price: 450 USD

Location: Pasadena, California

End Time: 2024-11-24T22:27:28.000Z

Shipping Cost: 25 USD