Homage to the Square: Red Brass
Artist
Josef Albers
(American, born Germany, 1888 - 1976)
Date1961
MediumOil on canvas on pressed wood
DimensionsOverall: 40 × 40 inches (101.6 × 101.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Friends of Art
Object numberF81-12
Signedverso, l.r. (incised): "^61"
InscribedUpper left: 40 x 40 [circled]
Upper right: Homage to the Square:
"Red Brass"
Albers 1961
Ground: 6 coats of Liquitex (Permt Pigment)
Painting: paints used -- from center:
Cadmium Red Light (Grumbacher F.)
Cobalt Violet Light (Lefebvre)
Cerulean Blue (Winsor + Newton)
all in one primary coat
" directly from the tube
Varnish: Polyvinyl Acetate + metacrylate
in Xylene + Toluene
MarkingsOther marks on reverse:
Unknown origin, handwritten in white chalk upper left: 9[?] 46
Unknown origin, handwritten in white chalk upper left: JANIS
On View
On viewGallery Location
- 129
Collections
DescriptionGeometric painting consisting of a cerulean-blue square circumscribing a cobalt-blue square circumscribing a cobalt-violet-light square enclosing a cadmium-red light square.Gallery LabelRed Brass may seem like an elementary exercise: a red square inside a larger violet square inside a still-larger teal-blue square. It is actually part of Josef Albers’s sophisticated, lifelong investigation of the spatial and psychological relationships among color, form, and proportion. It is one of hundreds in his Homage to the Square series.
While teaching at the Bauhaus, Albers experimented with color intensity and placement, allowing the colors to mix in the viewer’s eyes. His book, The Interaction of Color (1963), is a classic text of color theory.
Copyright© The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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