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A painting of squares in four shades of green.

The painting shows a large olive-drab green square which fills the picture space. Nesting within the olive-drab square near the bottom of the larger square is a dark green square, nesting within the dark green square near the bottom of the larger square a green square. Nesting within the green square near the bottom of the larger square is a bright green square.

Gallery Text

These two works (BR67.2 and BR63.28) from Albers’s series Homage to the Square exemplify his idea of art as a type of research. For each, Albers used the same basic format of nested squares, rendered in different media and sizes, to test various color combinations. He considered the series, which he returned to throughout his career, as a means to examine the logic of color and perception. Albers compiled his theories in the 1963 book Interaction of Color, a pedagogical text that quickly became — and remains today — an essential resource for art and design students. A teacher at the Bauhaus, the influential German design school eventually closed by the Nazis, Albers left Germany in 1933, when he was invited to teach at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He subsequently taught at Yale, Harvard, and Pratt, among other schools. For American artists, designers, and architects, Albers served as an essential link to the pre–World War II avant-garde and the legacies of the Bauhaus. His experiments with materiality, opticality, and color reverberated in 1960s American art, from the pulsating surfaces of post-painterly abstraction to the perceptual experiments of conceptual art.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
BR67.2
People
Josef Albers, American (Bottrop, Germany 1888 - 1976 New Haven, Conn.)
Title
Four Greens
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1964
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/222565

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on Masonite
Dimensions
76 x 76 cm (29 15/16 x 29 15/16 in.)
framed: 77.8 x 77.8 x 3.2 cm (30 5/8 x 30 5/8 x 1 1/4 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Anonymous gift; to the Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1967

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Anonymous gift
Copyright
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
1967
Object Number
BR67.2
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Exhibition History

  • 19th- and 20th-Century Paintings and Sculpture from the Museum's Collection, Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, 06/11/1980 - 08/31/1980
  • 19th- and 20th-Century Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, 02/08/1982
  • Modern Art at Harvard, Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, 07/31/1999 - 09/26/1999; Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, 10/09/1999 - 11/14/1999; Matsuzakaya Art Museum, Nagoya, 12/02/1999 - 12/27/1999; Oita City Museum, Oita, 01/06/2000 - 02/06/2000; Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki, Ibaraki, 02/11/2000 - 03/26/2000
  • 32Q: 1110 Mid-Century Abstraction II (Post-Painterly Abstraction), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 07/14/2021

Subjects and Contexts

  • The Bauhaus

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu