Josef Albers: Duets

David Zwirner is pleased to announce Josef Albers: Duets, opening at the gallery’s Paris location in January 2026. The exhibition presents significant paintings and works on paper from the 1930s through the 1970s in which two related forms are played against one another. Albers was fascinated by such dualities. He guides us to recognize first that either two disparate paintings or two disparate elements within a single painting are in many ways the same but also vary from one another because of shifts in color or their internal structures.

In some of the works, one element is simply a reversal of the other, but usually the pairings are more complex. In all instances, the viewer becomes engaged not just with individual images, themselves of great force and beauty, but also with the wonderful experience of two (and sometimes more) variations on a single theme, providing the sort of rich diversion offered by the music of J.S. Bach, whose work was a passion of Albers dating back to his childhood and increasing when he was at the Bauhaus.