Josef Albers – Homage to the Square: Yellow Climate (1961)

Louisiana poster with the work, Homage to the Square: Yellow Climate (1961), by the German artist, Josef Albers (1888-1976). Albers worked theoretically and practically with design, graphics, photography and poetry—but it is his paintings, especially the studies of the square—that have left the strongest, lasting traces. From 1950 until his death—for more than 25 years—Albers produced hundreds of variations on Homage to the Square.

Like hardly any other artist, Albers has studied the life of colors. Especially in his works on paper, you can experience sensuously how he achieves a complete penetration of the surface and space via a condensation of the color.

It was in Albers' homage to the square that his ability to maximize the spatial effect of color reached its peak. His search for the essence of his mediums, and the immediacy of paper, ultimately resulted in the poetry and vibrant life of these works.

Albers became one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Not least through his work, first as a teacher at the Bauhaus school in Germany, after escaping from Nazism in 1933 as a teacher in North Carolina, and then as a professor at Yale University.