Josef Albers Background

•  In 1963 he published Interaction of Color which presented his theory that colors were governed by an internal and deceptive logic.
• Most famous of all are the hundreds of paintings and prints that make up the series Homage to the Square. In this rigorous series, begun in 1949, Albers explored chromatic interactions with flat colored squares arranged concentrically.
• Painting usually on Masonite, he used a palette knife with oil colors and often recorded colors used on the back of his works.
• Albers's work represents a transition between traditional European art and the new American art. It incorporated European influences from the constructivists and the Bauhaus movement, and its intensity and smallness of scale were typically European.
• Here are some examples from Interaction of Color