Lithographs by Josef Albers Exhibited at Yale’s "Gallery at the Whitney"

Works by Josef Albers, considered one of the most influential artist-educators of the 20th century, will be on exhibit at The Gallery at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, September 3 to October 29. 

Works by Josef Albers, considered one of the most influential artist-educators of the 20th century, will be on exhibit at The Gallery at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, September 3 to October 29.

Albers was a member of the Bauhaus during the 1920s and of the Yale faculty from 1950 until his death in 1976. In 1971 Albers became the first living artist to be given a solo retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Titled “Josef Albers: Lithographs from ‘Interaction of Color,’” the exhibition features illustrations from Albers’s book “Interaction of Color,” a guide and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students originally published in 1963.

In both the book and the illustrations, Albers explored an experimental way of studying and teaching color. Albers maintained that it is impossible to see a color by itself — that how it is perceived is, instead, highly dependent on form and placement and its interaction with other colors.

“Just as the knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical … so no color system by itself can develop one’s sensitivity for color,” Albers observed.

What counts, he said, is vision — vision derived from experience, but “coupled with fantasy, with imagination.”

“Josef Albers: Lithographs from ‘Interaction of Color’” is on view Mondays and Wednesdays 3–5 p.m. or by appointment at (203) 432-0607. Admission is free, and the public is invited.