Untitled
1973
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
screrenprint in black and orange on German Etching wove paper
Dimensions
image: 26 x 35 cm (10 1/4 x 13 3/4 in.) sheet: 38 x 55.6 cm (14 15/16 x 21 7/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Joan Lees
Accession Number
1983.46.1
Art Historical Context
Josef Albers, a pioneering artist and educator associated with the Bauhaus movement devoted much of his career to exploring the perceptual properties of color. This *Untitled* screenprint from 1973, created late in his life, exemplifies his enduring fascination with how colors interact deceive the eye. Albers, who fled Nazi Germany and taught Black Mountain College and Yale, believed color was never static—its appearance shifts based on juxtaposition, a principle vividly at play here in the bold black and orange composition. Screenprinting, the medium of choice, allowed Albers to achieve prec...
About the Artist
Josef Albers
Josef Albers, born on March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, Westphalia, into a Roman Catholic family of craftsmen, received early practical training from his father, Lorenzo Albers, a housepainter and carpenter, mastering skills in engraving glass, plumbing, wiring, and printmaking. After working as a schoolteacher in Bottrop from 1908 to 1913, he trained as an art teacher at the Königliche Kunstschule in B...