Josef Albers: Homage to the Square 1950-1976

Squaring the Square

Josef Albers’s groundbreaking series Homage to the Square comprises roughly two thousand oil paintings. His continuous reflections and refinements for more than 25 years inspired numerous young minimal and conceptual artists in their search for a reduced formal language. This outstanding catalogue explores the secret of Albers’s subtle aesthetic and unearths its preconditions: What is the significance of the square? How does his impression of color and its use as a material change during this period? Featuring studies on paper, archival materials, as well as essays by internationally leading Albers experts such as Jeannette Redensek and Heinz Liesbrock, this richly illustrated publication sheds light on the various inspirations that influenced Albers early on in Europe and later in America, and illustrates the lasting impact of his art and thinking.

As an influential teacher, writer, painter, and color theorist Josef Albers (1888, Bottrop–1976, New Haven, CT) is one of the leading pioneers of twentieth-century modernism. From 1923 onwards he taught at the Bauhaus, and continued to do so after his emigration to the USA in 1933 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and at Yale University, where he worked on his Homage to the Square from 1950 until his death. 

Heinz Liesbrock (*1953) was the long-standing director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop. He has written extensively on Albers and his influence on art history.