MAPPING MODERN ART IN ITALY: HALF A CENTURY OF ART FROM AN EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

Josef Albers (1888-1976)

Study for Homage to the Square: Reciprocal

Details

Josef Albers (1888-1976)
Study for Homage to the Square: Reciprocal
signed with the artist's monogram and dated ‘A68’ (lower right); signed, titled and dated ‘Study for Homage to the Square: “Reciprocal” Albers 1968' (on the reverse)
oil on masonite
15 7/8 x 15 7/8in. (40.2 x 40.2cm.)
Executed in 1968

Provenance

Private Collection, Zurich (a gift from the artist in 1968).
Anon. sale, Sotheby’s Doha, 18 March 2009, lot 142.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

Exhibited

Vienna, Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, Josef Albers: Homage to the Square, 1992.
Zurich, Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst, Josef Albers. Arbeiten auf Papier und “Homage to the Square”, 1993-1994.
Zurich, Galerie Orlando, Das Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin und The New Bauhaus Chicago, 2005.

Further Details

This work will be included in the forthcoming Josef Albers Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by The Anni and Josef Albers Foundation.

Brought to you by

Alexandra Werner

awerner@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2954

Lot Essay

‘In Albers’s painting there is very much a simple, suitable and natural wholeness to the arrangement of squares within squares, which is one of the best ideas in the world, one which provided enormous versatility and complexity. This arrangement is easily at one with the color’ (D. Judd, quoted in Josef Albers, exh. cat., The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, 1991, p. 10).

Study for Homage to the Square: Reciprocal

Brought to you by

Lot Essay

More from Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction