Live Auction 1559Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction
Josef Albers (1888-1976)
Lot 223

Josef Albers (1888-1976)

Study for Homage to the Square: Ripening

Closed17 October 2014

Price Realised

GBP 230,500

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Josef Albers (1888-1976)
Study for Homage to the Square: Ripening
signed with the artist's monogram and dated 'A63' (lower right); signed, titled and dated '"Ripening" Albers 1963' (on the reverse)
oil on masonite
24 x 24 in. (60.9 x 60.9 cm)
Executed in 1963

Gimpel & Hannover Galerie, Zurich.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1970.

Specialist note

‘For me colour is my idiom. It’s automatic. I’m not paying “homage to the square”. It’s only the dish I serve my craziness about colour in... All rendering of form, in fact all creative work moves between polarities: intuition and intellect, or possibly between subjectivity and objectivity. Their relative importance continually varies and they more or less always overlap... Colour, in my opinion, behaves like man - in two distinct ways: first in self-realisation and then in the realisation of relationships with others... In other words, one must combine both being an individual and being a member of society’ (J. Albers, quoted in G. Alviani (ed.), Josef Albers, Milan 1988, pp. 235-236).