In 1950, while teaching fine arts at Yale University, the German-born Albers began his most extensive and well-known series, Homage to the Square—a rigorously formulaic project comprising more than one hundred paintings and prints and developed over twenty-five years. Albers's practice was shaped by the thirteen years he spent as a student and teacher at the Bauhaus, where color theory was central to the curriculum. He set out to demonstrate that "color is the most relative medium in art, and that we never really see what we see." He applied unmixed oil paint onto Masonite boards in concentric squares, creating color relationships that are, the artist stated, "aimed at an interaction—influencing and changing each other forth and back."
Gallery label from 2011.
