Josef Albers: Sunny Side Up

Throughout his career, Josef Albers (1888-1976) embraced color. Spanning five decades, these paintings show a range of Albers's experiments with simple geometric forms—from the Homage to the Square and Variant/Adobe series (begun in 1950 and 1947, respectively) to rarely-seen color studies—through which he explored how colors interact and are perceived.

In an interview in 1968, Albers remarked, “I was for years in the yellow period.” The particular appeal of yellow, used here in pure hues from goldenrod to mustard, maize, and saffron, may be attributable to its emotive qualities—as Nicholas Fox Weber, Executive Director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, explains, “Josef considered yellow the color of curing, caring and uplift.” He was deeply influenced by Goethe's Theory of Color (1810), which placed yellow “among the luminous and active colors.Ú

Josef Albers: Midnight and Noon includes an introduction by Nicholas Fox Weber and texts by Josef Albers, Elaine de Kooning, and Colm Tóibín. Published by David Zwirner Books.

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