JOSEF ALBERS | Study to Homage to the Square: Evident

Galerie Müller, Stuttgart Galerie Denise René-Hans Meyer, Krefeld

Private Collection, Essen

Sotheby’s, London, 26 October 1989, Lot 344

Private Collection, Italy (acquired from the above)

Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above circa 1996)

Christie’s, London, 24 June 2005, Lot 205 (consigned by the above)

Richard Green Galleries, London

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Bielefeld, Kunsthalle der Stadt Bielefeld, Josef Albers, September - December 1968, n.p., no. 1 Dusseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Josef Albers, September - October 1970, p. 55, no. 42

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Study to Homage to the Square: Evident is a masterclass in colour theory by Josef Albers, one of the most illustrious and influential artists of the Twentieth Century. Begun by Albers in 1950 – the same year he was appointed Head of the Department of Design at Yale – the Homage to the Square series set out to investigate the fundamental nature of colour and its perception through analysis of the experiential effects of various combinations of hues placed in various relations to each other. Opting for the crisp, hard-edged square as the vehicle for colour in his compositions, Albers kept these forms, their dimensions, and their relative positions constant for this inquiry. Accordingly, shape and form served as a control for Albers against which the relevant empirical effects of colour’s modulation could be ascertained and evaluated. The groundbreaking theses Albers derived from his work included the idea that certain combinations of chromatic values cause viewers to perceive spatial depth in unique ways: a central black square, for example, is invariably perceived as further away from the viewer than the square encompassing it. In addition, Albers drew the radical conclusion that one and the same hue can be seen by the viewer as more intense in one combination than in another, simply by virtue of being positioned in a different context. Colour – he discovered – has no context-independent hue: this supposedly intrinsic property actually depends, for its nature, on the hues surrounding it. A deeply spiritual man, Albers drew metaphysical conclusions from his colour theory.  The present work – like all of the Homage to the Square series – was crafted according to a meticulous process; ensuring a cross-compositional uniformity against which particular colour permutations could stand out. A central square of four by four inches – in this case a yellow of resounding freshness – was painted onto the rough side of a masonite board, in a commercially available colour often straight from the tube. Thin layers of paint were then worked onto the surface with a palette knife, creating for each work a surface individuated by the specific texture of its board. As a consequence, light and shadow play differently across the diaphanous surfaces of any two members of the Homage series, no matter how similar their hues. A second square of a different colour encompasses the first, and a third the second, before a thin white border encloses the composition in a final, perspective-determining strip. Every edge of these squares was painstakingly hand-painted by Albers without the use of tape, and, while the proximity of the edges of contiguous squares is maximal, no two colours from separate squares ever touch one another. In Study to Homage to the Square: Evident, the clarity of the central square set against a surrounding muted grey causes it to appear raised on a stone plinth or pedestal; approaching the viewer from the board like a numinous, holy ornament.

Born in Germany, Albers was both a student of art historical giants such as Wassily Kandinksy and Johannes Ittens at the Bauhaus school in the 1920s, and teacher of artists of a similar magnitude – including Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg – at Black Mountain College from 1933. Albers published the seminal Interaction of Colour in 1963, impelling future artists to see the formal mechanisms of line, form, and colour as forever inter-dependent and mutually constitutive. The impact of Albers’ oeuvre is far-reaching – his works seen as both intrinsically rich aesthetically, and replete with theoretical wisdom – and the aesthetics and spiritualism of Donald Judd are founded on his work. “When you really understand that each colour is changed by a changed environment,” Albers wrote, “you eventually find that you have learned about life as well as about colour” (Josef Albers cited in: Exh. Cat., Washington D.C., Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Josef Albers: The American Years, 1965, p. 28).



This work will be included in the Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings by Josef Albers currently being prepared by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and is registered under JAAF 1960.1.49.