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Pillars

Josef Albers American, born Germany
1928
Not on view
After studying painting at a traditional art school, Albers entered the Bauhaus in 1920 as an older student, and the school's progressive educational ideas served as a catalyst for his creative development. After his first six-month term, Albers disregarded the required class for wall painting, preferring to work in the glass workshop. While there he created colorful, nonobjective glass assemblages that he called "wall glass paintings" because they were "made of opaque glass which is neither transparent nor translucent." These early experiments in glass preface his modernist paintings based on color studies that preoccupied him for much of his later career.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Pillars
  • Artist: Josef Albers (American (born Germany), Bottrop 1888–1976 New Haven, Connecticut)
  • Date: 1928
  • Medium: Sandblasted flashed glass, vitreous paint, metal and chipboard
  • Dimensions: 23 7/8 × 23 7/8 in. (60.6 × 60.6 cm)
  • Classifications: Paintings, Sculpture
  • Credit Line: George A. Hearn Fund, 1970
  • Object Number: 1970.139
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

More Artwork
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Homage to the Square: Dilated, Josef Albers American, born Germany, Oil on Masonite
Homage to the Square: Dilated
Josef Albers
1969
Homage to the Square: Frontal Backing, Josef Albers American, born Germany, Oil on Masonite
Homage to the Square: Frontal Backing
Josef Albers
1970
Homage to the Square: On Near Sky, Josef Albers American, born Germany, Oil on Masonite
Homage to the Square: On Near Sky
Josef Albers
1963
Transformation of a Scheme No. 8, Josef Albers American, born Germany, Engraving on formica
Transformation of a Scheme No. 8
Josef Albers
1949
Never Before, Josef Albers American, born Germany, Oil on Masonite
Never Before
Josef Albers
1971

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