Boxerwood Education
Association (BEA) is sponsoring an exhibition of work by abstract artist Josef
Albers from October 8 through November 5 in the Staniar Gallery at Washington
and Lee University. Formulation :
Articulation is a suite of 127 silkscreen prints containing images that
display the optical possibilities of color and design.
Dr. Elliott
King, Professor of Art History at W&L, will present an exhibit lecture in
the Concert Hall at Wilson Hall on October 22 at 5:30 PM, with a catered
reception to follow. The Albers collection will be studied by students in the
Art Department while it is on exhibit in the Staniar Gallery, and may be viewed
by the public during gallery hours.
Josef Albers
(1888 -1976) was a painter, poet, sculpture, art theorist and educator who
introduced a generation of American artists to European modernist concepts. He taught
at Bauhaus in German, Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and Yale
University in Connecticut. Among his most successful students were Robert
Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Eva Hesse, and John
Chamberlain. Through his experimentation with color and shape, Albers produced
an alternative to abstract expressionism, inspiring the geometric abstraction,
color field painting and op art movements.
“Formulation:
Articulation” is a collection of 127 silkscreens printed on 66 plates containing
one, two, or four images, along with annotations by the artist. It took Albers,
while in his eighties, two years of concentrated work to create the prints for the suite. The collection is not a
retrospective of past works, although the images represent a compilation of
over four decades of the artist’s research, including his iconic Homage to
the Square series.
Since its
release in 1972, the complete suite has been rarely shown in its entirety, with
most museums and galleries only displaying selected works from the suite. Staniar
Gallery Director Clover Archer affirms that “Exhibition of the complete suite
will give our art students a unique opportunity to study how Albers’ color,
perception and abstraction have influenced modern art.”
Sponsorship
of the exhibition by Boxerwood, a local nature center with an environmental
education mission, might raise some eyebrows, but Board member Joe Dinardo, who
has loaned the Albers suite, sees an explicit connection.
“Art has
been part of Boxerwood tradition from the beginning,” notes Dinardo, “as Dr.
Robert Munger acquired sculpture by local artists for what was then his private
garden.” Since becoming an education nonprofit, Boxerwood has opened the woodland
garden to the public and continues to offer it as a venue to inspire creativity
as expressed through the arts. Dinardo maintains
that “creativity comes from awareness of our surroundings, the same awareness
that inspires us to care for our surroundings, especially the natural world. This
year, as Boxerwood celebrate our 15th year as a community nature
center, one of our goals is to step up that aspect of our mission – merging
creativity and art with the environment.”
The Albers
suite belongs to the private collection of Dinardo and his wife, Joan. Dinardo,
a retired toxicologist, now divides his time between various nonprofit
endeavors, including revitalizing the arts at Boxerwood. He will be helping to stage
Boxerwood’s Earth Day Art Festival this April 19, and is developing plans to
establish a sculpture garden on the nature center’s 15 acre campus over the
next five years.
Information
about the Boxerwood Education Association and Boxerwood Nature Center &
Woodland Garden is available at www.boxerwood.org and www.facebook.com/pages/Boxerwood-Nature-Center-Woodland-Garden.
Staniar
Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee
University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Monday through
Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.
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Formulation : Articulation (Portfolio 2, Folder
3), 1972, Silkscreen print (Image credit: Special Collections &
Archives, Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University)
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