The Impossibles and Rolled Wrongly

Two samples of curved compositions originally executed in sandblasted glass pictures.

At the left, The Impossibles; at the right, Rolled Wrongly (originally Falsch Gerickelt). On both sides are pairs of straight upright creatures most unusually rounded and curled. Developed in 1931 as mostly white figures against black or gray, forty years later those underwent a drastic change in coloration, although the figure designs have remained precisely repeated. All four figures appear in a light but restrained red-orange on a dry brown-red (either Venetian or Indian red) ground. The curves are articulated in black, and the vertical modulation lines in the color of the ground. The whole, now, may be in a mystic stage.

Statement of content reproduced from Josef Albers’s Formulation: Articulation.