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Lot Essay
‘All this enables the knowing colorist (painter, designer, etc.) to make equal colors look different and different colors alike; so that bright looks pale; and dull, intensive. He turns warm into cool, and the opposite; exchanges advancing and receding properties at liberty; makes opaque looks transparent; definite shapes unrecognizable. In short, he not only recognizes that color is deceiving us all the time, but uses color as an acting agent, changing its identity in many ways. Color is a magic force.’
—JOSEF ALBERS
With its stately concentric squares drawing the eye to the work’s centre, Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square is a journey through rich, summery yellows, and a superb example of the master-colourist’s series of the same name. Painted in 1960, the work dates from a period in which the artist returned repeatedly to a range of yellows – as well as proximal reds, oranges and browns; in this Homage, the artist’s work in yellow reaches a sublime apex, its collocations of colours a perfected distillation of the vivid colours of the American summer that fired the artist’s imagination.
Beginning the series in 1950 and devoting himself to it until his death in 1976, Albers conceived the Homage to the Square series as a culmination of much his artistic practice and thought; leaving his teaching post at Black Mountain College in 1949, having also previously taught at the Bauhaus, the Homage to the Squares embody the principles of colour theory. Understanding that a colour’s effect was unstable, and contingent on the relationship with the properties of others surrounding it, Albers had his students work through exercises that focused on the context of colour, placing gradually more complex arrangements of tones together in order to demonstrate the fluidity and variety contained within individual shades. In Homage to the Square series, Albers has taken these ideas to their apex; only ever using the form of one of four geometric models, the works explore the way in which different arrangements colours resonate with the viewer.
—JOSEF ALBERS
With its stately concentric squares drawing the eye to the work’s centre, Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square is a journey through rich, summery yellows, and a superb example of the master-colourist’s series of the same name. Painted in 1960, the work dates from a period in which the artist returned repeatedly to a range of yellows – as well as proximal reds, oranges and browns; in this Homage, the artist’s work in yellow reaches a sublime apex, its collocations of colours a perfected distillation of the vivid colours of the American summer that fired the artist’s imagination.
Beginning the series in 1950 and devoting himself to it until his death in 1976, Albers conceived the Homage to the Square series as a culmination of much his artistic practice and thought; leaving his teaching post at Black Mountain College in 1949, having also previously taught at the Bauhaus, the Homage to the Squares embody the principles of colour theory. Understanding that a colour’s effect was unstable, and contingent on the relationship with the properties of others surrounding it, Albers had his students work through exercises that focused on the context of colour, placing gradually more complex arrangements of tones together in order to demonstrate the fluidity and variety contained within individual shades. In Homage to the Square series, Albers has taken these ideas to their apex; only ever using the form of one of four geometric models, the works explore the way in which different arrangements colours resonate with the viewer.