Homage to the Square: Early Rise,

1961

In 1950 Albers became the head of the department of design at Yale University and launched his well-known series Homage to the Square to explore the visual effects of color and demonstrate how relationships between areas of color can induce optical illusions. Each work in the series consists of a sequence of nested squares whose relative scale is governed by mathematical ratios. Albers experimented with variations in the brightness and saturation of color that caused some squares to appear to project and others to appear to recede. He described works like this as stages on which color might “act,” ascribing agency to color. The artist’s interest in color relationships developed as a student and later as a teacher at the Bauhaus school in Germany. Students at the Bauhaus, and subsequently those at Black Mountain College and Yale, honed their understanding of color theory in the artist’s courses.