Todos nuestros catálogos de arte All our art catalogues desde/since 1973 JOSEF ALBERS MINIMAL MEANS, MAXIMUM EFFECT 2014 El uso de esta base de datos de catálogos de exposiciones de la Fundación Juan March comporta la aceptación de los derechos de los autores de los textos y de los titulares de copyrights. Los usuarios pueden descargar e imprimir gra- tuitamente los textos de los catálogos incluidos en esta base de datos exclusi- vamente para su uso en la investigación académica y la enseñanza y citando su procedencia y a sus autores. Use of the Fundación Juan March database of digitized exhibition catalogues signifies the user’s recognition of the rights of individual authors and/or other copyright holders. Users may download and/or print a free copy of any essay solely for academic research and teaching purposes, accompanied by the proper citation of sources and authors. www.march.es FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH www.march.es Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March To dis trib ute mate r ial pos ses sions is to divide them to dis trib ute spir i tual pos ses sions is to mul ti ply them Josef Albers Fundación Juan March Josef Albers minimal means, maximum effect March 28 – July 6, 2014 FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH Madrid, 2014 Fundación Juan March Josef Albers teaching at Black Mountain College (detail), 1944. Photo: Josef Breitenbach Fundación Juan March Lenders Institutions FRANCE Paris Centre Pompidou: 8, 64, 73 GERMANY Bottrop Josef Albers Museum Quadrat: 13, 37, 93, 95 Dessau Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau: 10, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160 SPAIN Madrid Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza: 42 SWITZERLAND Riehen/Basel Fondation Beyeler: 67 UNITED KINGDOM London Tate: 38, 58 UNITED STATES Andover, MA Addison Gallery of American Art: 29 Bethany, CT The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 15, 17, 18, 21, 27, 32, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 65, 70, 71, 72, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171 New Haven, CT Yale University Art Gallery: 16, 28, 31, 55, 59 New York, NY Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros: 110 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: 19, 26, 30, 35, 76, 132, 133 The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 60, 104 Washington, D.C. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution: 11, 12, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 94 Private Collections SPAIN Avarigani Collection: 75, 90 Guillermo de Osma Collection: 20 Helga de Alvear Collection: 89 Private collection. Courtesy Galería Elvira González: 68 Private collection. Courtesy Galería Guillermo de Osma: 74 Private collections: 66, 69 Rodríguez-Pina Collection. Courtesy Galería Elvira González: 91 Fundación Juan March Acknowledgements The Fundación Juan March wishes to express its gratitude to the following individuals and institutions for their constant collaboration, assistance, and the loaning of works which have made this exhibition possible: Addison Gallery Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Brian T. Allen, James M. Sousa Guillermo Solana, Marián Aparicio, Beatriz Blanco BauerTypes Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport Wolfgang Hartmann Elisa de Cabo de la Vega, José Luis Rodríguez, Pilar Corchado Centre Pompidou Alfred Pacquement, Brigitte Léal, Corinne Picarello, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau Olga Makhroff Wolfgang Thöner, Philipp Oswalt, Werner Möller, Lutz Schöbe Colección Helga de Alvear Helga de Alvear, Alberto Gallardo Tate Nicholas Serota, Caroline Collier, Katherine Richmond, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Camilla Stephens Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, Skye Monson The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Nicholas Fox Weber, Brenda Danilowitz, Jeannette Fondation Beyeler Redensek, Samuel McCune, Anne Sisco, Michael Beggs, Sam Keller, Raphaël Bouvier, Tanja Narr, Matthias Fritz Horstman, Nicholas Murphy Fellmann The Metropolitan Museum Galería Elvira González Thomas P. Campbell, Sheena Wagstaff, Cynthia Iavarone, Elvira González, Isabel Mignoni, Begoña Sánchez Caitlin Corrigan Galería Guillermo de Osma Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Guillermo de Osma, José Ignacio Abeijón Richard Armstrong, Nancy Spector, Tracey Bashkoff, Jodi Myers Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Tone Hansen, Milena Høgsberg Yale University Art Gallery Jock Reynolds, Jennifer Gross, L. Lynne Addison, Pamela Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Franks, Laurence Kanter, Suzanne Greenawalt, Amy Constance R. Caplan, Kery Brougher, Annie Farrar Canonico, Meghan E. Maher, Kathleen Mylen-Coulombe Imprenta Municipal de Madrid José Bonifacio Bermejo Martín Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop Adela Castellano, Santiago Eguidazu, Marta Golobardes, Heinz Liesbrock, Ulrike Growe Lucía López de Toledo, Juan March Delgado, Juan March Juan, Laura Martínez de Guereñu, Carlos Ortega and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Alejandro Villalba. And, as always, our sincere thanks to Manuel Borja Villel; Mª Victoria Fernández-Layos, Banca March and to Corporación Financiera Alba. Carmen Cabrera Lucio-Villegas Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Contents 11 Josef Albers: Art as Economy of Form Foreword Fundación Juan March 15 Josef Albers: Minimal Means, Maximum Effect Nicholas Fox Weber 21 On Josef Albers’ Painting Materials and Techniques Jeannette Redensek 43 Works 199 Josef Albers. An Anthology 1924–1978 Laura Martínez de Guereñu, María Toledo, Manuel Fontán Texts by Josef Albers I. BAUHAUS, 1924–1933 II. BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE, 1933–1949 III. YALE UNIVERSITY, 1950–1960 IV. LATER TEXTS, 1961–1976 Texts on Josef Albers 352 Josef Albers. A Biography 1888–1976 María Toledo 364 Catalogue of Works 370 Bibliography Erica Witschey 376 Exhibition Catalogues and other Publications by the Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Fundación Juan March Josef Albers: Art as Economy of Form Foreword Josef Albers: Minimal Means, Maximum Effect is the fi rst retrospective in Spain devoted to Josef Albers (1888–1976). Comprising more than one hundred works of art in addition to furniture, objects, photographs, and a range of documentary material, the exhibition has been devised and developed over the last years in close collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (Bethany, Connecticut). Notwithstanding its retrospective character, the exhibition is not structured as a simple chronological survey of the artist’s work, although this would in itself be enormously enriching and instructive. Rather, it presents the work of Josef Albers as a project equally characterized by its coherence and its search for simplicity, its productive use of deliberately limited means and resources, its respect for manual labor and its emphasis on experimentation with color, taking material shape in a body of work with a marked poetic and spiritual content. Albers’ output is decidedly the result of a judicious administration of artistic resources. In its totality his oeuvre is the consequence of a true “economy of form.” With the exception of his earliest creations, which deploy an Expressionist idiom typical of early 20th-century Germany, the work of Josef Albers was completely governed by an economy of means that constitutes the guiding thread of his artistic practice. One of the artist’s fi rst texts, published in 1928 with the title “Werklicher Formunterricht,” opens with the following words: “Ours is an economically oriented age,” and goes on: “In earlier times, world-view was more important” (see p. 211 in this catalogue). Nonetheless, the idea of economics as employed by Albers is not that of the exchange of goods, in other words it is not the limited market economy. The term has a more profound, universal meaning: it is the economics of the exchanges between human beings and between them and the objects of the world. From this broader viewpoint, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue also explore Albers’ working process and his refl ection about teaching, his theoretical and practical activities, given that in this area too he was a remarkable fi gure: a student and later a professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, and a teacher at Black Mountain College and fi nally at Yale University, in a way comparable to few other artists Albers’ life was closely linked to the two most advanced experiments in art teaching in the 20th century. The exhibition aims to emulate his pronounced pedagogical vocation and thus includes teaching material and exercises by his students at the Bauhaus and at Yale, most notably those pertaining to his fi nal years at Yale, in the form of the student works that Albers would use to structure his celebrated text Interaction of Color. * * * 11 Fundación Juan March With regard to his activities as a writer on art and educational theory and as a teacher and poet, the present catalogue includes an extensive documentary section with 57 texts by Albers, 26 of them previously unpublished. In addition, it brings together 14 accounts of him by colleagues, students, art historians, essayists and writers, 4 of which are published here in English for the fi rst time. The texts by Albers himself reveal how the uniquely economical approach that determined his artistic creation also prevailed in his theoretical refl ections and in his ideas on teaching and the practice of art and design. The reader will appreciate that in the texts written by Albers between 1924 and 1966 the same, or very similar, ideas and deep-rooted convictions constantly reappear, tried and tested against his vision of the world and his experience of life. This is not, however, mere repetition or recycling, but rather an authentic “economy of distribution.” In his texts, Albers made intelligent use of his ideas, “investing” them in fi elds as different as artistic creation, historical and contemporary consciousness, typography, art teaching, abstract art, color, design, architecture and the meaning of existence.