Homage to the Square
Artist
Josef Albers
(German, 1888-1976)
Date1907
MediumSerigraph
DimensionsImage Size: 19 1/2 × 19 1/2 in. (49.5 × 49.5 cm)
Frame Size: 27 3/4 × 27 3/4 in. (70.5 × 70.5 cm)
ClassificationsPrint
Object numberUAC7694
DescriptionJosef Albers (1888–1976) was a highly-influential German-born American artist and educator, renowned for his work with color theory and geometric abstraction. His career launched in interwar Germany—he studied and later taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar—before moving to the United States in 1933. Albers was appointed and became a pivotal educator at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and later at Yale University, where he significantly shaped the design program. His most famous series, Homage to the Square, explores interactions and impact of color through variously sized and layered squares; Albers documented every color and material used during each work’s creation, which helped him formulate his own theories as well as later scholarship. Albers made hundreds of paintings in the Homage to the Square series. This work, labeled SP – IX in the lower left corner, contains four squares—charcoal gray, forest green, olive green, and dark teal from largest exterior to smallest interior. The bluishness of the largest square is balanced by that of the smallest, sandwiching the greens and speaking to Albers’ interests in juxtaposition and repetition as tools for inquiry. Further, while the side margins are roughly equal, the margin below each square is smaller than the one above, suggesting descent, weightiness, or even a perspectival recession into space. Another effect of these changing margins is to make some squares (particularly the greens) seem a little less square.
Albers’ systematic, scientific approach to form and color informed his 1963 book Interaction of Color (a seminal text in color theory), emphasizing the importance of practical experience, experimentation, and observation in understanding color relationships. His contributions to modern art and practice have been significant in this way, and his methodology as a teacher—with notable students including Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, and Richard Serra—has left a lasting impact on design education.
Written by Sarah Teppen
https://www.albersfoundation.org/alberses/biography
Patricia Sherwin Garland, “Josef Albers: His Paintings, Their Materials, Technique, and Treatment,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 22, 1983: 67.
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