Josef Albers, Color Study for White Line Square, oil on blotting paper with gouache, pencil and varnish, 1976? The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
It is part of the exhibition “Josef Albers in America. Painting on paper”. It shows ca. 80 studies for larger paintings. Those studies are part of the llife-time investigation into color.
“Josef Albers painted over 2000 paintings in his Homage to the Square series between 1950 and 1976, the year he died. What is less known is that the paintings—which took only a few hours each to execute—were preceded by intense color studies in oil, or sometimes gouache, on blotting paper. Unlike the pristine paintings on masonite or board, the sketches are loosely painted. Most are notated in the margins, sometimes even on the paint itself, with the information of their making: the names of paint brands and colors Albers used, and daubs of related hues. Sometimes the sketches are divided, and we see how one set of hues worked in relation to another, or they reveal his attempts to find the perfect gray foil to the hues already selected. Albers chose blotting paper for his sketches so that it would absorb much of the oil, leaving intensely pigmented color on the surface. Fifty of these sketches had been the subject of a splendid exhibition at the Morgan Library, Josef Albers in America.” And on other places around the globe. Read here.
Design is fine. History is mine. 