Study for Homage to the Square: Reflecting

Albers arrived at the theme of the Homage to the Square late in his career, and dedicated the last 25 years of his life to the subject. His intention was to demonstrate how solid colours visibly change according to what colour surrounds them. He wrote: "They are juxtaposed for various and changing visual effects. They are to challenge or to echo each other, to support or oppose one another. The contacts, respective boundaries, between them may vary from soft to hard touches, may mean pull and push besides clashes, but also embracing, intersecting, penetrating.

"Despite an even and also opaque application, the colours will appear above or below each other, in front or behind, or side by side on the same level. They correspond in concord as well as in discord, which happens between both groups and singles.

"Such action, reaction, interaction - or interdependence - is sought in order to make oblivious how colours influence and change each other: that the same colour, for instance, - with different grounds or neighbours - looks different. But also, that different colours can be made to look alike. It is to show that 3 colours can be read as 4, and similarly 3 colours as 2, and also 4 as 2." (As quoted in: Ex. Cat. London, Gimpel Fils, Josef Albers: Homage to the Square, May-June 1985.)