D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of over 25 art works to demonstrate Josef Albers’ impact on 1960s geometric abstraction. Albers reached American artists in two ways: his Homage to the Square paintings of concentric squares executed from 1950 to 1976 and his book Interaction of Color published in 1963. Two artists in our exhibition, Richard Anuszkiewicz and Julian Stanczak, studied with Albers while completing their MFAs at Yale. Albers’ book reached many young artists, including Paul Reed in DC, Al Loving in Detroit, and Tadasky in Tokyo. Across the styles of Op, Hard Edge, Color Field, and Constructions in our exhibition, we show how geometric artists of the 1960s were influenced by Albers and his teachings.   

The square was an unusual canvas shape in painting until the development of abstraction in the 20th century. Prior to that, horizontal rectangles depicted landscapes and vertical rectangles were used for figuration. Albers selected the square as a neutral shape with simple borders to allow for color interaction. Albers’ serial compositions of nested squares reveal color’s relativity and instability in its interactions. Our exhibition presents three ways artists used the square: to emphasize color interactions; to explore the tension of symmetry; and to put Albers’ exercises into three dimensions in plastic constructions and shaped canvases.   

Our exhibition is timed with the opening of Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s exhibition Moving Vision: Op and Kinetic Art from the Sixties and Seventies (https://www.okcmoa.com/visit/events/movingvision/), featuring the museum’s extensive holdings of Op art. Works by Anuszkiewicz, Stancak, Tadasky, Mon Levinson, and Reginald Neal are included. Along with the installation, the museum will be holding a series of talks held online. A write up on the exhibition can be found here: https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2021/01/25/5509-moving-vision-exhibition-of-op-and-kinetic-art-to-feature-ophthal  

Richard Anuszkiewicz, Al Loving, and Tadasky were recently included in the Blanton’s Expanding Abstraction: Pushing Boundaries of Painting in the Americas, 1958-1983. https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibition/expanding-abstraction/  

The full exhibition as well as a text by Emily Lenz can be found on the gallery's website: dwigmore.com