An exhibition of silk-screen prints by the prolific 20th-century artist, Josef Albers, is heading to the Swindon Art Centre in October. Josef Albers, a highly innovative teacher and artist, exerted an enormous influence on the history of modern art in Europe and America. Known as 'The Square Man', he is most renowned for his 'Homage to a Square' series of abstract paintings. Referring to them as "the dish I serve my craziness about colour in" he made over a 1,000 Homages paintings and prints between 1950 and his death in 1976. Working at the Bauhaus, and later at Black Mountain College and Yale University, Josef's lifelong preoccupation was with colour and geometric abstraction and the relationship between them. Despising chaos, and the freedom of abstract painting, Josef worked in a careful and deliberate way using a minimum of tools and paints. Rather than mixing colours he often simply squeezed unmixed paint straight from the tube onto the canvas, spreading it evenly and thinly with a palette knife.
 | | Composition 1972 by Josef Albers |
The resulting paintings give colour a unique emphasis. His colours react with each other, are deceptive and unpredictable and take on many different roles depending on the colours that surround them. Viewers, of his work, are unable to take it at face value and the sense of optical illusion forces them into a changing and dynamic relationship with it. Despite his reluctance to be labeled with any specific artistic movement, he is generally credited with influencing the movements of Geometric Abstraction and Minimalism and is acknowledged as being one of the first modern artists to delve into the psychological effects of art on the viewer. Believing in diversity and variability he said that no two people pictured the same colour upon hearing the word 'Red'. Running from Saturday October 22nd, through to Saturday 19th November, the exhibition at the Swindon Arts Centre gives an overview of Alber's career from his early geometrical abstractions at the Bauhaus to his famous experiments with colour in the 'Homages to the Square' series. A Haywood Gallery National Touring Exhibition, the collection of silk-screen prints has been pulled from Alber's Formulation: Articulation portfolio. Designed and produced, under Alber's direction in 1972, it includes works from all the major series of his life including the the Homages (1950-1975), Graphic Tectonics (1941-42), Structural Constellations (1949-76) and Variants (1947-55). The Swindon Arts Centre, Devizes Road, Swindon is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm and Saturday 10am to 1pm. Admission is free. For more information call the Arts Centre on 01793 466 520. | 
