Josef Albers in Mexico

May 19–September 3, 2018

Josef Albers in Mexico traveled to thePeggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where its debut presentation met with critical acclaim. The exhibition featured photographs, photo collages, canvases, and works on paper relating to Josef Albers's many visits to Mexico—a place that struck him, as he later wrote to his former Bauhaus colleague Vasily Kandinsky, as "the promised land of abstract art." A major review by Roberta Smith in The New York Times describes "a quietly stunning exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum that contrasts Albers's little-known photographs of the great Mesoamerican monuments of Mexico with his glowing abstract paintings."

Albers visited Mexico with his wife Anni 14 times between 1935 and the late 1960s. The black-and-white photographic works in this exhibition, many of which had never been shown publicly before, were drawn from hundreds the artist took at pre-Columbian archaeological sites and monuments. The exhibition also featured related materials including maps tracing Albers's travels, letters and journals, images of the excavation sites, films, and undeveloped contact sheets drawn from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation archives. A slideshow featuring nine works from the exhibition in New York is included in Forbes. In a review of the show inThe Wall Street Journal, Richard B. Woodward describes a "quietlyprovocative exhibition" that uncovers "previously hidden dimensions" in the artist's work.

A Guggenheim publication accompanying Josef Albers in Mexico features essays by Lauren Hinkson, who curated the exhibition, and Joaquín Barriendos, a map, and reproductions of works in the show. These are organized by region based on the pre-Columbian archaeological sites that the Alberses frequented. Related public programs at the Guggenheim in New York included curator's tours of the show.