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Lot 3 THE MAXIMILIAN SCHELL ESTATE
Josef Albers (1888-1976)
Study for Homage to the Square: Kind Regards
Closed5 November 2014
Price Realised
EUR 361,500
More Information
Specialist note
This work will be included in the forthcoming Josef Albers Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by The Anni and Josef Albers Foundation.
'Every perception of colour is an illusion... we do not see colours as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.'
(Josef Albers quoted around 1949, when he began his Homage to the Square series, in: A. Moszynska, Abstract Art, London 1990, p. 147)
From 1949 until his death in 1976, Josef Albers created an expansive series of works entitled Homage to the Square which rigorously explored the artist's fascination with how colours appear when seen independently and how they interact when juxtaposed. Albers presented these 'platters of colour' as he called them at the Sidney Janis Gallery where Maximilian Schell was to first encounter his portfolio in the early 1970s. To Albers, the square was a perfect form due to its simplicity, leading to his belief that such a common shape would not distract viewers from their experience and perception of colour. Schell, at about the same time, realized that one of Albers's grey or black Homages might be the perfect basis of a set for a staging of Hamlet which he was directing and in which he would play the title role. For what other work of art so truly affirmed the profundity of Hamlet's questioning, or the affirmation of what it means "to be"?
'Every perception of colour is an illusion... we do not see colours as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.'
(Josef Albers quoted around 1949, when he began his Homage to the Square series, in: A. Moszynska, Abstract Art, London 1990, p. 147)
From 1949 until his death in 1976, Josef Albers created an expansive series of works entitled Homage to the Square which rigorously explored the artist's fascination with how colours appear when seen independently and how they interact when juxtaposed. Albers presented these 'platters of colour' as he called them at the Sidney Janis Gallery where Maximilian Schell was to first encounter his portfolio in the early 1970s. To Albers, the square was a perfect form due to its simplicity, leading to his belief that such a common shape would not distract viewers from their experience and perception of colour. Schell, at about the same time, realized that one of Albers's grey or black Homages might be the perfect basis of a set for a staging of Hamlet which he was directing and in which he would play the title role. For what other work of art so truly affirmed the profundity of Hamlet's questioning, or the affirmation of what it means "to be"?