Josef Albers’ colour theories and paintings, which emphasise the role of colour over that of form, promote an approach to painting that is based on observation and experimentation.
Homage to the Square
As a painter, Albers is most remembered for his ‘Homage to the Square’ series, which he began in 1950 and worked on for the following 26 years. The paintings in this series are defined by a successive superimposition of squares upon one another, sometimes in varying shades of a single colour (Departing in Yellow, 1964) and sometimes in complementary colours (a painting in red and blue, titled Homage to the Square: Against Deep Blue, from 1955). Albers painted directly from the tube with a palette knife as a way of creating a ‘pure’ painting, free of brushstrokes.
Through their abstracted forms and solid colours, Albers’ paintings contemplate human emotion and the light of different times of day and season. Albers was particularly interested in the nuanced chromatic or tonal juxtaposition of colours, once remarking that although midnight and noon cannot exist together in life, they can in a painting.
