Albers and Morandi

Albers and Morandi: Never Finished

Publisher: David Zwirner Books

Publication Date: 2021

Text by Laura Mattioli. Conversation between David Leiber, Heinz Liesbrock, and Nicholas Fox Weber

An unprecedented catalogue exploring the formal and visual affinities and contrasts between Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi—two of modern art’s greatest painters.

Rarely seen together, the artwork of Josef Albers (1888–1976) and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) shares many similarities. Although they never met, both artists worked in series as they explored difference and potential through their distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, and morphology. They were also both influenced by Cezanne. As master illusionists and experts in proportion, they tackle similar conceits from different perspectives. Albers focused on the effects of subtle or bold changes and interactions in color, while Morandi made still lifes that treat simple objects as a cast of characters on a stage, exploring their relationship in space.

Published on the occasion of the critically acclaimed exhibition Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, the book illuminates the visual conversation between these two artists. With the exhibition hailed by The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl as “one of the best … I’ve ever seen,” this publication brings this unusual, thought-provoking pairing to your home. Gorgeous reproductions are accompanied by a roundtable about form and color between the exhibition’s curator, David Leiber; Heinz Liesbrock, the director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, Germany; and Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, as well as an essay by the Morandi expert and founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art, Laura Mattioli.

Never Finished
Albers and Morandi
Albers and Morandi
Albers and Morandi

Details

Publisher: David Zwirner Books

Artist: Josef Albers, Giorgio Morandi

Contributors: Laura Mattioli, David Leiber, Heinz Liesbrock, Nicholas Fox Weber

Publication Date: 2021

ISBN: 9781644230596

Retail: $60 | £55

Status: Available

Designer: Practise (James Goggin)

Printer: VeronaLibri, Verona

Binding: Hardcover

Dimensions: 9 × 10 in | 22.9 × 25.4 cm

Pages: 144

Reproductions: 68

Artist and Contributors

Josef Albers

Josef Albers (1888–1976) is considered one of the most influential abstract painters of the twentieth century, as well as an important designer and educator. Albers’s artistic career, which bridged European and American Modernism, consisted mainly of a tightly focused investigation into the perceptual properties of color and spatial relationships.

Giorgio Morandi

Among the most celebrated and influential artists of the twentieth century, Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) is best known for his paintings, drawings, and etchings depicting still life arrangements of quotidian objects. Although Morandi spent nearly his entire life in his hometown of Bologna and rarely traveled outside of Italy, his work was exhibited internationally and was widely admired by the avant-garde as well as traditional schools both during and after his lifetime.

Laura Mattioli

Laura Mattioli is an art historian, writer, and founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York.

David Leiber

David Leiber, a partner at David Zwirner in New York, works closely with The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Estate of Diane Arbus, and major collectors of work by Giorgio Morandi, as well as the contemporary artist Liu Ye. In addition to curating Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings in 2015 and Albers and Morandi: Never Finished in 2021, he has overseen numerous exhibitions at the gallery, including Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art (2018), Juan Muñoz: Seven Rooms (2022), Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited (2022), and Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985 (2022). In 2023, David curated the gallery’s Roma/New York, 1953–1964 exhibition, exploring the significant intellectual and artistic cross-pollination between artists in the centers of Italian and American art in the 1950s and 1960s.

Heinz Liesbrock

Heinz Liesbrock is the director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop.

Nicholas Fox Weber

Nicholas Fox Weber is a cultural historian and has been the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation for the past four decades. During this time he has worked tirelessly to preserve the lasting achievements and legacies of the Alberses. He has written extensively on each artist, recently completing an unprecedented visual biography of these icons of twentieth-century art. Other books of his include artists such as Le Corbusier and Balthus. He is currently in the process of writing a groundbreaking new biography of the artist Piet Mondrian. He also spearheads Le Korsa, a nonprofit organization he founded in 2005 to assist with medical care and education in Senegal.

$60