JOSEF ALBERS

When the Bauhaus closed in 1933 under the order of the Nazi party, Josef and Anni Albers fled Germany to America where they became the first permanent faculty at the Black Mountain College. A radical centre for artistic education that became a breeding ground for so many of the figures who defined American modernity, the Albers were a central part of the cultural and creative ecosystem. Both in Germany, and in America, Josef Albers primary concern was color, and his ‘Homage to a Square’ series was produced throughout his life and laid the foundation for contemporary color theory. Yet coming to rural North Carolina from the flatlands of Weimar seemed to open up a new geometric, formal interest in Albers. As illustrated with this print, made just a year after his arrival, he explores how organic curves and gentle forms play with sharp, rigid lines. Produced in monochrome, this is a work uninterested in color and fascinated with shape, a work that represents new possibilities in the face of such devastation.

BRICE MARDEN

Inspired by the poems of Hanshan, a 9th Century Chinese poet who lived in willing exile in the mountains where he wrote his poems on rocks, trees and cave walls, Marden created 6 large scale works. Hanshan’s poems are immensely spirituality in the Taoist and Zen traditions, and Marden’s work are implicitly informed by this. Bridging a gap between the real and the imagined, the formal and the abstract, the natural and the unnatural, Cold Mountain 6 is about the in-between space where peace lives. He painted the canvases from the bottom to top and left to write, so as to mirror the Chinese writing system and in this way the painting can be seen also as calligraphic abstractions. What is left behind when we remove meaning from beauty?

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

Goldsworthy is not monumental; he is but a vehicle to amplify the world he loves. Small, subtle interventions in the landscape are the root of his practice. Sculptures that last as long as nature dictates, piles of leaves painstakingly organised are dispersed with the wind and formations of sticks live at the will of the tides. In their brief moments of life, Goldsworthy’s works are exemplars of staggering beauty, but this beauty can only exist if we accept that they are transient. Nature is Goldsworthy’s collaborator and his teacher. “I take the opportunities each day offers”, he says, “if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.”