Study for Homage to the Square: With Saffron

Painted in 1962, Josef Albers’ Study for Homage to the Square: With Saffron demonstrates a symphony of color and form. An exquisite example of Albers’ celebrated series, Homage to the Square, this painting presents one of the typical arrangements the artist invented for his studies – four squares in subtle, varying layers of yellow and orange, placed in a precise formation. Critically juxtaposed with each other, Albers' painting brings to life the connections between the squares, which encapsulates the artist’s committed investigation of the ways humans perceive and experience color. Albers stated: "Seeing several of these paintings next to each other makes it obvious that each painting is an instrumentation in its own. This means that they are all of different palettes, and, therefore, so to speak, of different climates. Choice of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction - influencing and changing each other forth and back." (J. Albers "On My Homage to the Square", in Josef Albers, exh. cat., The Mayor Gallery, London, 1989, p. 31)
Albers embarked on this influential series in the early 1950s, shortly after becoming the chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University. Not only a fine artist, Albers had been committed in arts education where he occupied a series of teaching positions, from the Bauhaus in Germany to Black Mountain College when he moved to the United States. Albers’ seminal educational legacy prevails as he acted as a bridge between European avant-garde traditions and the generation of aspiring American Post-War artists.