Homage to the Square: Dense-Soft Yale University Art Gallery

1969

In 1950 Josef Albers initiated his Homage to the Square paintings. He believed that limitations promote focus, and this rule-governed series provided an ideal laboratory for that theory and his study of color. There are only four compositional variations throughout the hundreds of Homages that form the series. Albers applied the paint with a palette knife, leaving a thin border around each painting to set the work apart from its environment. Depending on adjacent hues, colors can seemingly change from translucent to opaque, giving the illusion of luminous haloes and dissolving borders between two areas of color.

Medium: Oil on Masonite
Dimensions: 39 7/8 × 39 15/16 in. (101.3 × 101.5 cm)
framed: 40 1/2 × 40 1/2 in. (102.9 × 102.9 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Anni Albers and the Josef Albers Foundation, Inc.
Accession Number: 1977.160.60
Culture: American
Period: 20th century
Classification: Paintings
Disclaimer: Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Bibliography

Gwathmey Siegel, exh. cat. (Wilmington, NC: Cameron Art Museum, 2009), 104, fig. 104

Brenda Danilowitz and Nicholas Fox Weber, Color and Light: Josef Albers Homage to the Square, exh. cat. (Sao Paulo, Brazil: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2008), ill.

Object copyright

In Copyright

Additional information

Object/Work type

abstract (general art genre)

Subject

square

Signed

LR: "A69" (69 is superscript)

Technical metadata and APIs

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