Homage to the square: Autumn echo
1966
- Gallery location
- Contemporary Art gallery
Level 3, NGV International
About this work
Josef Albers created this work at the height of his fame as an artist and theorist of abstraction. He began his famous series Homage to the Square in 1949 to systematically explore colour reactions like a scientist and to demonstrate, he said, ‘the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect’. Albers did this by reducing composition and design right down to the barest of bones, placing coloured square within coloured square and repeating this geometric image in painting after painting. The only variant was his choice of colours, which evoked specific atmospheric moods, like musical nocturnes. This work was purchased from the influential exhibition Two Decades of American Painting, which opened at the NGV in June 1967.
Artwork Details
Purchased with the assistance of the National Art Gallery & Cultural Centre Appeal Women's Council and the National Gallery Society of Victoria, 1967
© Josef Albers/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Level 3, NGV International