(Connecticut, North Carolina/Germany, 1899-1994)

(Weber & Danilowitz 29),1972, edition 132/150, signed lower right "Anni Albers 1972", titled lower left, stamped verso, Fox Press, West Hartford, printer, the artist and Fox Press, West Hartford, publisher, photo offset print on paper, sheet 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50 cm.); metal frame, 24-3/8 x 20-1/4 x 1 in.

Provenance: The Collection of Clare and Jared Edwards, West Hartford, Connecticut

Note: In the 1999  Anni Albers retrospective exhibition catalog, Nicholas Weber comments on Anni Albers' beginnings with photo offset prints and this series specifically, "When we began to discuss the possibility of her working with photo-offset, Anni proved to be a quick study. She decided that she would utilize the medium to make a print of two horizontal rectangular forms stacked one on top of the other. Each of the rectangles would contain a triangulated pattern, in keeping with the artist's recent geometric experimentations, a design full of diversion and ins and outs, but deliberately lacking in internal symmetry or repetition. At the Bauhaus, Anni had been deeply moved by Wilhelm Worringer's pivotal book Abstraction and Empathy; she embraced Worringer's idea of abstraction providing the opportunity to create "visual resting places" removed from the often painful realities of the natural world. She was interested in art that was timeless and universal rather than art with specific links to a known locale or moment in history, or to the maker's personal experience. This pure realm of art could provide some of the harmony that life itself sometimes lacked. To keep the viewer engaged, the new creation, like all of Anni's compositions, had to eschew easy resolution; like Josef, Anni imbued abstraction with a certain tension, a perpetual in/out motion, an ongoing play between image and ground. The artist's own persona was to fade in deference to the sacred realm of art and the comforts as well as the realities of the technical. Anni had no wish to reveal private emotions or the sometimes troubling fluctuations of her own mind and heart; she preferred, instead, to focus on the purely aesthetic and practical issues of printmaking, just as she had for many years reveled in the construction of textiles."

very slight toning and fading, slight foxing verso at edges; frame with abrasions