From Bauhaus to ukiyo-e — Josef and Anni Albers and Masami Teraoka
Key information
MEDIA RELEASE
6 JUN 2024
The revolutionary art of Anni and Josef Albers and Masami Teraoka’s ukiyo-e style works feature in two new exhibitions as part of the National Gallery’s Kenneth E. Tyler Collection series.
Opening 8 June 2024, Anni & Josef Albers presents the work of two leading pioneers of 20th century Modernism. Exploring the Bauhaus art movement of the 1930s, and its influence on artistic expression across Europe, the exhibition celebrates the contributions of Anni and Josef Albers to minimalist abstraction, and their far-reaching legacy within an Australian context.
Guided by Josef’s explosive use of colour and Anni’s command of pattern making and weaving, Anni & Josef Albers brings together 119 works by the artists and their contemporaries including prints, weaving and painting. Key works include Anni’s Meander and Mountainous series, and Josef’s Homage to the Square: On an Early Sky, Gray Instrumentation and White line square series. Also included in the exhibition are works by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Paul Klee, Gunta Stölzl and Lotte Stam-Beese.
The Bauhaus art school was a brief but monumental modernist project in the early 20th century. Across 15 years, students and masters came together in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin under the common goal of renewing artistic endeavour, rejecting the academies of the past to embrace a new spirit.
Meeting in 1922 at the Bauhaus, Anni and Josef married three years later. The couple then brought the interdisciplinary Bauhaus philosophy to the liberal Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1933 teaching a new generation of artists through practices that emphasised form, material and process.
Contemporary Japanese American artist Masami Teraoka is known for his unique fusion of historic art aesthetics with contemporary themes. The first solo exhibition of his work in Australia, Masami Teraoka and Japanese ukiyo-e prints will open on 21 September 2024.
Born in Japan in 1936, Teraoka initially studied Aesthetics before moving to Los Angeles in 1961. Teraoka’s immersion in American culture profoundly influenced him artistically and personally, he became an insightful observer and commentator of Japanese and American culture. From the early 1970s, he adopted traditional 17th–19th century Japanese ukiyo-e print making techniques combining them with elements of American Pop Art to reflect on contemporary issues such as globalisation, culture clash, and the AIDS crisis.
The exhibition will showcase Teraoka’s ukiyo-e style works alongside traditional ukiyo-e prints, exploring their visual, strategic and thematic connections. Notable ukiyo-e artists featured will include Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. A highlight of this Kenneth E. Tyler Collection exhibition will be Teraoka’s Hawaii snorkel series, created at Tyler Graphics Limited in 1992/93.
From 1966 until 2001 master printer Kenneth Tyler collaborated with some of the most influential artists of the 20th century on projects that pushed the artistic and technical boundaries of printmaking including Anni and Josef Albers Masami Teraoka. Archival materials in both exhibitions showcase the hybrid techniques and innovative approaches Tyler employed to help the artists realise their visions.
Dr Nick Mitzevich, National Gallery Director, said: ‘We are honoured to present these two important exhibitions, the next in the series drawn from the riches of the Kenneth E Tyler Collection. Anni and Josef Albers are iconic figures in the narrative of modernism with a far-reaching legacy. Through dynamic displays of artworks and archival material audiences will be able to experience their revolutionary and innovative practice.’
‘Works by internationally acclaimed contemporary artist Masami Teraoka are shown for the first time in a dedicated exhibition in Australia. The exhibition is coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the National Gallery’s seminal exhibition Don’t leave me this way: Art in the age of AIDS, which featured works by Teraoka. The exhibition captured the relentless onslaught of HIV/AIDS on our society. Thirty years on, it is timely to present this exhibition of Teraoka’s work.’
Anni & Josef Albers and Masami Teraoka and Japanese ukiyo-e prints are Kenneth E. Tyler exhibitions. The National Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Anni & Josef Albers Exhibition Patron Penelope Seidler AM.
Anni & Josef Albers, installation view, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2024
Masami Teraoka, printed and published by Tyler Graphics, Catfish Envy, 1993, from the Hawaii Snorkel Series, 1992–93, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002 © the artist and Kenneth E Tyler
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Anni & Josef Albers
8 Jun – 22 Sep 2024 | Free
Curator: Imogen Dixon-Smith, Kenneth E. Tyler Curator, International Prints and Drawings
Masami Teraoka and Japanese ukiyo-e prints
21 Sep 2024 – 2 Mar 2025 | Free
Curators: Beatrice Thompson, Associate Curator, Asian Art and Kira Godoroja-Prieckaerts, Kenneth E Tyler Assistant Curator, Catalogue Raisonne
PUBLICATION
Anni and Josef Albers is the first book to support an exhibition of the artists’ work in Australia and includes a series of original texts exploring the careers of both artists, and how the influence of Bauhaus brought their work and ideas to Australia through collaboration with creatives including artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, architect Harry Seidler and master printer and philanthropist Kenneth Tyler. This publication has been produced with the support of key contributor and esteemed architect Penelope Seidler AM. 216 pages. 240 x 320mm. Full colour. Paperback. RRP $59.95.
Download PDF here.
STORIES & IDEAS
Read more on Anni and Josef Albers here.
'Masami Teraoka and ukiyo-e print making’ | Read here.
EVENTS
Art Lab: Colour & Pattern Introduction to tapestry weaving holiday workshop | Fri 12 & Sat 13 Jul
Printmaking Demonstration: Anni Albers’ Meander series | Sat 27 Jul
Anni & Josef Albers: Screen-printing workshop with Francis Kenna | Sat 20 – Sun 21 Jul
Art talk with Imogen Dixon-Smith on Anni Albers | Fri 21 Jun
Anni & Josef Albers: Screen-printing workshop with Francis Kenna | Wed 24 – Thu 25 Jul
For bookings, visit here.
IMAGES
Available here
MEDIA RELEASE
Bauhaus powerhouse couple to star at the National Gallery | 18 Apr 2024
MEDIA ENQUIRIES
JESS BARNES
Communications Manager
M | +61 437 986 286
E | jessica.barnes@nga.gov.au
Portrait of Anni Albers sitting on white couch, 1973. Photographer: John T. White
ABOUT THE ARTIST: ANNI ALBERS
Born Annelise Fleischmann in Berlin in 1899, Anni Albers studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Art) in Hamburg, before enrolling at the Bauhaus in 1922 where she met Josef. When the school was closed in 1933, they relocated to the United States and worked as teachers at Black Mountain College. Anni was a member of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus and drew inspiration from the Andean weavings of ancient Peru. Anni first collaborated with Kenneth Tyler at Gemini GEL in 1970. In 1978, Anni worked at Tyler and Graphics to create the series of six white embossed prints, Mountainous.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: JOSEF ALBERS
Josef Albers was born in Bottrop, a coal-mining city in Germany in 1888. After training and working as a primary school teacher, and attending art schools in Berlin, Essen and Munich, he studied and later taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he met Anni and they married in 1925. Josef went on to become a professor at the Bauhaus when it moved to Dessau in 1925 until it closed in 1933 due to Nazi repression, at which point he accepted an invitation to teach at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. Continuing to make art and explore colour theory, Josef met Kenneth Tyler, first working together at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. When Tyler moved to Los Angeles in 1965, Albers’ White line squares was his first print project.
Masami Teraoka standing in front of 'Kunisada eclipsed' at Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York, 1992
Gift of Kenneth Tyler 2002
Photographer: Marabeth Cohen-Tyler
ABOUT THE ARTIST: MASAMI TEROKA
Born in the Hiroshima Prefecture Japan in 1936, Teraoka studied Aesthetics at the Kwansei Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961 to further his artistic training where he completed a Batchelor of Fine Arts and Masters of Fine Arts at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles. Moving to the US had a major impact on Teraoka both personally and artistically. He embraced a style that melded his Japanese artistic background with American pop art elements and themes. Incorporating the traditional vocabulary and narrative style of ukiyo-e art to comment on contemporary subjects. Teraoka has had over 70 solo exhibitions and is represented in over 50 public collections worldwide.
Kenneth Tyler with Anni and Josef Albers
ABOUT THE KENNETH E TYLER COLLECTION
The Kenneth E. Tyler Collection at the National Gallery of Australia is the world’s most comprehensive collection of prints produced by the master printmaker and publisher. It contains of over 7400 editioned prints, proofs, drawings, paper works, screens, multiples and illustrated books as well as an archive of photography, film, audio and workshop materials. This collection encompasses the work of North American artists over four decades and has been the source for an ongoing program of research, exhibitions and publications at the National Gallery.
Lotte Stam-Beese, Group-portrait, Weaving Workshop at the Bauhaus, Dessau, 1928, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1984
ABOUT THE BAUHAUS ART MOVEMENT
The Bauhaus was a brief but monumental modernist project. Over the course of 15 years, students and masters came together across Germany with the common goal of renewing artistic endeavour, rejecting the academies of the past to embrace a new spirit of cooperation.
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