Josef Albers
Formulation

Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibition Josef Albers: Formulation : Articulation, 1972, a suite of 127 silkscreen plates, opening on March 12^th at 99 Wooster Street, New York.

 

Published by Harry N. Abrams and Ives and Sillman, just 4 years before Albers’ death in 1976, Formulation : Articulation is a collection of 127 silkscreen plates, 121 in color, organized into two portfolios, each containing 33 folders on which one, two, or four silkscreen plates are printed. The portfolio is accompanied by a text with Albers’ notes on each of the plates. Albers refers to these notes as “Statements of Content” in which he discusses the design and color selections and often comments on the work in relation to the plate previous to it. In fact, Albers took great care in selecting the order of the plates to create particular juxtapositions or series of his visual explorations.

 

Over a period of two years of concentrated work, Albers, while in his eighties, created the prints for Formulation : Articulation. The collection is not a retrospective of past works, yet the images represent a gathering of over 4 decades of the artist’s investigation into color, perception, and abstraction.

 

From his iconic Homage to the Square series, to lesser-known images, the prints display the optical possibilities of color and design. Ever the consummate teacher, Formulation : Articulation can be seen as a summation of the artist’s pedagogy. Albers’ writing, work, and teaching profoundly influenced a generation of artists and visual arts instruction the world over.