Josef Albers

I think that Albers is trying to communicate the sense that working with simple matters such as boxes, like the one that I have copied is a unique and different way to portray art. I think that the mood is simplicity as all his boxes are different shades of the same colour though if he included a lot of colours then it would make the picture more exciting and perhaps it would have a different mood. The squares look like it is making a hole. This is because of the use of the hues of colours and linear perspective that he uses. I have checked this by drawing lines on a copy of a painting by lining up the corners and they all intersect to make a vanishing point. I was interested to do this because he claims that all the squares were drawn to mathematical formula. It does not convey any emotions as it is just squares. This painting is one of a series of studies called ‘Homage of the Squares’ which Albers has carried out to study the effects of colour and how they work together.

 In 1949, Albers explored chromatic interactions with flat colored squares arranged concentrically. Painting usually on Masonite which is similar to hard board and is a firm smooth surface, he used a palette knife to spread the oil paint as evenly and thinly as possible with oil colours and he recorded colours used on the back of his works. The image seems flat as there is no picture resembled through the boxes. What I have noticed is that the colours get brighter the further away they are which displays a feeling that it is moving forward. The outer square of the painting starts off darker with a green, and the inner squares brighten until the centre square is yellow. There is a muddy appearance about the outside colour which makes the in the centre colour seem brighter. From what I can see, the painting gives the impression that it is smooth.

Josef Albers was born in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany in 1888. From 1905 to 1908 he studied to become a teacher and then went to teach children at primary schools at Westphalia from 1908 and 1913. He taught many things such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Whilst doing teaching he decided that he wanted to concentrate in teaching art and soon qualified as an art teacher in 1915. Through the next few years teaching art, Albers began to develop abstract art and print making. He continued his learning at Kunstgewerbeschule studying lithography and subsequently at The Royal Bavarian Art Academy in Munich where he studied drawing with Franz Stuck and went to an art class in painting techniques.

He moved to America and was invited to teach at the newly-founded Black Mountain College Asheville in North Carolina, USA. He headed the art department.  The College had a reputation as a radical artistic community.

In 1949 he resigned and moved to Yale University with his wife.  Here he started work on a series of paintings called “Homage to the Square”.  It took 25 years to complete the series and consists of 1000 paintings. He used squares in proportion to each other to create optical illusions with the colours.   On the back of each picture he kept details of the colours he used.  In 1963 he published his book “Interaction of Colour” which is still used as a textbook in art schools today.  He wanted students to learn through creating effects themselves rather than him giving detailed explanations.

He felt that a colour cannot be seen in isolation – it is always seen in relation to the colours it is surrounded by.

My work relates to Albers by I have been studying colour theory and find that his study of how colours relate to each other  will be useful to get the best effect on my work.

Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1888. He worked in his fathers’ carpentry business and was a trainee at a jewellery studio. Then, in 1911 he started his own cabinet-making firm, lasting 8 years. During this era he studied architecture. Through his studies he became familiar with several founders of De Stijl. These were cubist artists who restricted their style to using straight black lines, right angles and primary colours.  You can see this influence on his designs of chairs. I have included a painting by Piet Mondriaan as an example of the kind of work of the De Stijl movement.

In 1917 Rietveld designed the ‘Red Blue Chair’, which indicated a drastic change in architectural theory. His different, odd furniture designs led to quite a few housing tasks which he always designed in a Neo-plastic style. The designs developed the free and changeable use of space and showed a deep understanding of ‘dynamic spatial ideas’.

In the late 1920s architecture in the Netherlands focused on the idea of "dematerialization". This idea influenced a series of terrace houses which Rietveld was involved. In 1928 Rietveld acted as a founding member of CIAM.

In the years of the 1930s and 1940s Rietveld, with a few exceptions, found that work was not particularly productive. Between 1942 and 1948, Rietveld taught at several institutions in the Netherlands. In 1963 he was elected an honorary member of the Bond van Nederlandse Architecten and in 1964 he received an honorary degree from the Technische Hochschule in Delft.

Rietveld died in Utrecht in 1964.