Josef Albers More Prints

No artist has contributed more to our understanding of color than German-born painter, writer and educator Josef Albers (1888–1976). At the Bauhaus, Albers taught what was perhaps the first course dedicated to the study of how different hues interact with one another.

“In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually,” he wrote in The Interaction of Color, a compilation of his 30 years of research into color theory at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University School of Art, where he was head of the department of design.

Albers dismissed the notion that colors could be understood solely through their physical properties. Instead, he emphasized their unstable, seductive, character and the necessity of observing their behavior in different contexts. “If one says ‘red’ — the name of color — and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds,” he wrote. “And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”

The wealth of prints, lithographs and other works by Albers are studies in color perception. The paintings of “Homage to the Square” — his most iconic series, begun in 1950 and stretching over more than 25 years — investigate the perceptual mutations produced when colors are juxtaposed in nested squares.

The simplicity of these compositions is deceptive, demonstrating as they do how the illusion of dimensionality and afterimages can be created using entirely flat forms. Albers painted nearly a thousand “homages,” and his treatment of color as a metamorphosing, magical element was crucial to the development of the Op art movement.

Browse a provocative collection of screenprints, lithographs and more by Josef Albers at 1stDibs.