Master illusionist

Josef Albers explored our changing perceptions of colour in his art. He considered tricks of the eye sacred, says Tina O’Sullivan

JOSEF Albers (1888 – 1976) is the subject of a new exhibition The Sacred Modernist: Josef Albers as a Catholic Artist at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery in University College Cork. The whole building is devoted to the show, whose works include a specially commissioned stained-glass window.

The curator is Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, which Albers and his wife set up in 1971 to celebrate “the revelation and evocation of vision through art.” The foundation conserves the Albers’s art and archives and conducts educational activities and an artist-in-residency programme.