Luminous in its rugged golden splendor, Josef Albers’s Study to Homage to the Square: “Bronzed”(1959) immediately recalls a steamy desert day, heatwaves glimmering just above the hardpacked clay, sunlight glinting off mesas rising in the distance. Variegated warmth seeps across the Masonite’s textured surface, carrying the memory of each shade over border after border into new territories. Frequent voyages to the Southwest, Central and Latin America nourished the artist’s scholarly interest in the relationship between color and design, while their distinct landscapes rubbed off on his pliant palette. A study in the “psychic effect of color,” as much as it is in color’s “physical fact,” the present work hosts a dialogue among burnt umber, ochre and bronze, in which the colors themselves bespeak their unique qualities while simultaneously uniting in support of the ever-present square (J. Albers, The Color in My Paintings, c. 1954). Wary of restricting his conversation to inanimate materials, Albers invites a final participant – the viewer: “…just as influential are changes in perception depending on changes of mood, and consequently of receptiveness” (J. Albers, The Color in My Paintings, c. 1954).
Painted at the close of a momentous decade for Albers, having enjoyed his first solo shows in both New York and Paris in 1952 and 1957 respectively, Bronzed deftly packs the fiery punch of a well-traveled colorist grappling with enchanting new horizons. “Choice of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction—influencing and changing each other forth and back” (J. Albers, On My “Homage to the Square”, 1954). In the same way Albers’s thoughtful hues leave their mark on one another, so too can their spectators, changing each other for the better.
This work hails from the prestigious Collection of Courtney Sale Ross, featuring a selection of artworks by Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Josef Albers, among others. Born and raised in Bryan, Texas, and educated at Skidmore College, Courtney Sale Ross married Steven J. Ross in 1982; soon after their marriage, the couple welcomed a daughter, Nicole, into their lives. Mr. Ross earned a reputation as one of the late twentieth-century’s most notable businessmen, famously transforming Warner Communications into Time Warner, the world’s largest entertainment and media company at its creation in 1989. Together, the Rosses became well-known patrons of charitable causes, a tradition Mrs. Ross has proudly continued in the years following her husband’s passing in 1992.
Among the Rosses’ most notable achievements is the Ross School in East Hampton, New York, a private institution first established to provide an education for their beloved daughter and several of her friends. Mrs. Ross would go on to significantly expand the Ross School, which now educates nearly 500 students across its lower and upper schools. In developing the curriculum for the Ross School, Mrs. Ross worked closely with cultural historian William Irwin Thompson and mathematician Ralph Abraham. Students learn the
history of the world, and trace the development of civilization through engaging and innovative programming. More recently, Mrs. Ross has worked to bring this unique educational model to an even larger audience through the Manhattan-based Ross Institute, which aims to transform learning by providing youth with the tools necessary to succeed in an increasingly international and complex world.
In many ways, Mrs. Ross’s holistic approach to education finds its parallel in her private collection of fine art, a diverse assemblage reaching from the 3rd century BC to the present day. Encompassing works from myriad world cultures and aesthetic philosophies, the collection is unified by Mrs. Ross’s exceptional connoisseurial eye—one that has been honed across years of scholarship and the pursuit of beauty.
Post Lot Text
The work is registered in the catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Josef Albers as 1959.1.17.
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