David Zwirner

Josef Albers

Josef Albers teaching, Black Mountain College, North Carolina, c. 1948

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. Bridging European and American modernism, his oeuvre comprises a tightly focused investigation into the perceptual properties of color and spatial relationships. Working with simple geometric forms, Albers explored the effects of chromatic interaction in which the visual perception of a color is affected by those adjacent to it.

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Josef Albers

City, 1928/1936
Tempera on Masonite in artist’s frame
11 x 21 1/2 inches
27.9 x 54.6 cm
Artist’s frame: 22 1/8 x 43 1/4 inches
56.2 x 109.9 cm

Umbo (Otto Umbehr) and Josef Albers, J.A. / Foto Umbo 28, 1928 (detail)

Made in 1936, after Albers had moved to the United States to teach at Black Mountain College, this work revisits City, a damaged glasswork made in Germany eight years earlier, when Albers was at the Bauhaus.

The artist’s stencil and sandblasting technique lend his glassworks a distinctive clarity and immediacy that translates into the crisp geometry of painting. This is one of the only paintings of its kind created by the artist as a historical record of a significant Bauhaus-era composition.

Installation view, Josef Albers: Glasbilder, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1932. Photo by Josef Albers. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 1976.19.6389. © 2020 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany

This rhythmic abstract arrangement also served as the basis for Manhattan, a monumental mural commissioned in 1963 by Walter Gropius for the Pan Am building in New York, now best known as the MetLife building, which was recently reinstalled.

As Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, writes, “Manhattan was designed to be seen on the move as commuters traveled up and down the bank of highspeed escalators leading to Grand Central—what Albers called a portal to New York. For him, the project was not just an opportunity to represent the Bauhaus ideals on a grand scale, but a chance to celebrate New York, emboldened by its vital energy, visual pleasures and growing forest of skyscrapers.”

Albers once described the mural as “my homage to the city of New York.”

Josef Albers, Manhattan, 1963. Pan Am Building, New York City. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Josef Albers, Manhattan, 1963. Recreated for 200 Park Avenue, New York, 2019. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Photo by J. Alex Lan

Image credit for Umbo (Otto Umbehr) and Josef Albers, J.A. / Foto Umbo 28, 1928 (detail): The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 1976.7.1106. Image © 2020 Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/VG Bild-Kunst, BonnCollage. © 2020 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Tim Nighswander/Imaging4Art

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