Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

4to. 80 folding color screen prints by Albers (institutional ink stamps to verso of each print, minor soiling, and wear.) Loose as issued with commentary booklet in cloth folding case, accompanied by text volume in cloth; cloth folding case, spine lettered in white (institutional stamps to spine and front pastedown, uneven fading to spine, adhesive residue at spine head, significant rubbing resulting in fraying to cloth at joints). Provenance: Philadelphia Museum College of Art Library (institutional stamps).

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, one of 2000 copies, of Josef Albers's masterpiece on the study of color, the work that "would immortalize the name Josef Albers for artists and art students the world over" (Danilowitz, p.20). Albers began the project that would culminate in this publication in 1957 while teaching at Yale. Conceived as a book about the "teaching and learning of color", Albers culled heavily from his courses on color interaction he had taught over the previous years, using some of the best examples of student work completed during that time to illustrate the behavior and relationship between various colors. "Published in 1963.. Interaction of Color was an unprecedentedly complicated production that involved three printing firms and custom-mixed inks. Albers supervised the production of the color studies with the help of [Sewell] Sillman, and a small army of Yale students was roped in to help assemble the completed portfolios. [Norman] Ives was responsible for the design." (Danilowitz, pp.20-21)