Homage to the Square - Aglow

Artist Josef Albers (1888 - 1976)

Date1963

MediumOil on board

Dimensions101 x 101 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1970. © The Estate of Josef Albers.

Object number1292

DescriptionJosef Albers initially studied and subsequently taught at the Bauhaus School in Germany from 1920 until its forced closure by the Nazis in 1933. Like many artists at this time, Albers left Germany for America, where he became an influential art theorist and teacher. He taught at the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina and was appointed principal of the Yale School of Design in 1950.

It was around this time that he began his monumental Homage to the Square series. Through this series, which was to eventually encompass over 1000 works in various media including works on paper and tapestry, Albers explored the effects of colour relativism and interdependency, harmony, proportion and the perception of colour planes advancing or receding into depth. Albers would sometimes make colour sketches, which would then be worked up to a larger scale. In 1963, the year in which this work was painted, Albers's book 'Interaction of Colour' was published. While the structural formalism of the Homage to the Square series is rigorous, the titles are occasionally annotated with additional descriptions, in this case the word 'Aglow', which emphasise the intense lyricism and primacy of the visual experience which pervade these works.

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