Study for Homage to the Square ‘Greek Tragedy’

Executed in 1961, and unseen in public for half a century, the present work is a radiant example of Josef Albers’ landmark Homages to the Square. Concentric squares of blue, grey and brown shrink inwards, culminating in a luminous zone of ochre that glows brightly like a beacon at the painting’s core: Albers made just twelve works with this composition and palette, including examples held in the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Hilti Foundation. Begun in 1950, and pursued until his death in 1976, the Homages stand among the twentieth century’s most important investigations into the properties of colour. For Albers, the push and pull between neighbouring tonalities was a topic as rich, multifarious and mysterious as life itself, its study revealing deep truths about human existence. While the titles of his Homages were rarely symbolic, the present work’s allusion to Greek tragedy seems to gesture towards this belief. In the frictions between each square, a drama of epic proportions plays out: a battle of light and darkness that rises and falls according to its own poetic rhythm.

Albers firmly believed that art should move forwards: looking backwards, he claimed, was the remit of historians. Having begun his career at the Bauhaus during the 1920s, before taking up a position at the revolutionary Black Mountain College in North Carolina, the spirit of the avant-garde ran deep within his veins. At the same time, however, Albers was fascinated by ancient culture. He made numerous trips to Mexico with his wife Anni, where he immersed himself in the study of pre-Columbian art and architecture. His lectures and writings were populated by references to Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato. Yet what Albers took from these sources were ideas that transcended history: thoughts on beauty, harmony, abstraction and form. While the Homages superficially extended the chromatic lessons of Klee and Kandinsky, or chimed with the currents of hard-edged abstraction and Minimalism, they ultimately aspired to a language of timeless, universal truth. The study of colour, Albers believed, was ultimately a study of human nature; by observing the relationships between shapes and hues, we might begin to understand our interactions with one another.

Spanning a quarter of a century, the Homages formed a cycle as sprawling, complex and revelatory as any Greek saga: Albers, indeed, would publish his seminal treatise Interaction of Color two years after the present work. The sparse forms of his paintings, organised according to one of four designs, allowed colour to be observed at its most raw, highlighting the microscopic tensions that define how a particular hue is perceived. They were a fitting corollary to Albers’ teachings—most notably as Chair of the Design Department at Yale University School of Art—which focused his students’ attention upon the minutiae of everyday chromatic phenomena. Working flat on a table, the artist applied paint directly to the rough side of a Masonite board, often squeezing it directly from the tube before spreading it with a palette knife. Some works would be enlarged and embellished in successive variations; others remained singular expressions of particular chromatic ‘climates’. Each was a chapter in a tale that might continue indefinitely; together, they spanned the full gamut of human experience, uniting art, science and philosophy. In the present work, an age-old narrative plays out in scintillating colour: light burns at the end of the tunnel, pushing heroically against the dark forces that threaten to engulf it.