JOSEF ALBERS: PROCESS AND PRINT

Josef Albers (1888–1976) is certainly more famous today for his links to the Bauhaus, where he studied and later taught from 1920 to 1933, and for his oil paintings in the series Homage to the Square (1950–76) than for his graphic work. Yet he also created prints and drawings throughout his career. His graphic work ranges from the austere blacks and whites of his first woodblock prints—with subjects inspired in the landscape of the coal mines in his native town, Bottrop, in the former province of Westphalia (now in North Rhine-Westphalia)—to the vivid colors and abstract geometry of his screenprints from the 1960s and 70s. Albers, like so many other artists, found printmaking to be particularly congenial because of the economical production involved, the creative liberty of the medium, and the opportunity that it offers for trial and error, experimentation and innovation.