Pillars

© The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pillars

Currently not on view

Pillars,

1928, printed 1970

Josef Albers, 1888–1976; born Bottrop, Germany; died New Haven, CT; active Weimar, Germany, and New Haven
Printed by Sirocco Screenprinters
x1972-7

A highly influential teacher whose lessons focused on color compositions, Albers taught at the Bauhaus in Germany and then later at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, and at Yale. This composition derives from Albers’s 1928 glass paintings, in which the glass was sandblasted to create a uniform color field, a quality that the medium of silkscreen can replicate. Here the complex interactions of shape, pattern, and color create spatial illusion and visual rhythm in an emphatically flat image.

Information

Title
Pillars
Dates

1928, printed 1970

Maker
Josef Albers
Printed by Sirocco Screenprinters
Medium
Screen print
Dimensions
image: 29 x 26 cm. (11 7/16 x 10 1/4 in.) sheet: 49 x 44.9 cm (19 5/16 x 17 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Carl Otto von Kienbusch, Class of 1906, for the Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr., Memorial Collection
Object Number
x1972-7
Place Made

North America, United States, Connecticut, New Haven

Signatures
Editioned, signed,and dated in graphite, lower right: 64//100 Albers '70
Inscription
Text printed in gray along bottom of sheet: The aim of life is living creatures / the aim of art is living creations J.A. / Josef Albers, Pillars, 1928 / in commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Marks/Labels/Seals
Blindstamp of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lower left Blindstamp, lower right: [gemini?]
Reference Numbers
Danilowitz 199
Culture
American
Type
prints, screen prints
Materials
printing ink
Techniques
screen printing
Subject
rectangles

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