Design for 'Lauben' (Arbour or Bower)

This work is accompanied by a letter from Albers dated 20 February 1967 confirming its title and describing it as a study for a sandblasted (opaque) glass painting, which the artist executed at the Bauhaus. Albers joined the Bauhaus in 1922 to head the glass workshop, which he reorganised and developed. In 1925 the workshop was dissolved, since its emphasis on individual craftmanship did not correspond with the Bauhaus's new focus on mass-production design. Albers then stayed at the Bauhaus as a Bauhaus Master teaching undergraduates. However, he continued to work with glass and it was around that time that he developed the sandblasted flashed glass technique for wall paintings. Particular in technique and characterictic in style, these glass paintings and related prepartory watercolours form a particularly coherent group in Albers's early oeuvre.