OUGD404 - Studio Brief 01 - Josef Albers' Use of Colour

Josef Albers was a German-American artist and educator, best known for his disciplined approach to composition. His series 'Homage to the Square' began in 1949 in which he explored chromatic interactions of colour enclosed within squares. Each painting in this series consists of three or four separate squares of solid colour settled within one another in various arrangements, with the squares slightly gravitating towards the bottom edge. Albers described works in this series as all having different climates, by which he meant different colour palettes. His choice of colours are aimed to cause interaction. In using a symmetrical order of squares, these separate and interact in various different ways.

Albers believed that in our visual perception, a colour is rarely ever seen as it physically is, which makes it the most relative medium used in art. Therefore it should be understood that one individual colour can evoke numerous meanings and suggestions. In his work, Albers showed how distinct colour effects can be created through the interaction of colour, for example by making two different colours look similar. This is known as 'The Relativity of Colour'. In this approach to colour, Albers disregarded the standard approach of theory and practice by putting emphasis on feeling the relationships between colour rather than just simply seeing the colour as it is. In doing so, he puts his practice before theory, suggesting a new way to study colour, not a new theory.
In addition to this, Albers showed that when two colours use the same value they can be seen to 'vibrate'. This effect is produced because we see more value of a colour than it's hue which is uncomfortable for the eye to look at.