A #192 cobalt green for Josef Albers: the last Homage

Abstract

The German artist Josef Albers (1888-1976) devoted most of his life to an intense teaching work. He was at the Bauhaus as student since 1919 and later began to teach there until 1933. Exiled to the United States, he taught mostly at Black Mountain College and the Yale Fine Arts School. In his series Homage to the Square explores the interaction of color as the basis of painting and he sets up perception as the origin of any artistic phenomena as well as in his teaching. He defended art education as a necessary cornerstone of any general education and developed this provocative idea in most of his numerous writings. The present paper goes through his life, teaching and creative context to analyze his last Homage to the Square. The painting is proposed here as the synthesis of his creative search which bloomed as the inspiration of generations until now. A very determined Winsor&Newton cobalt green pigment was the key for a singular vibration of the greenish tones of the painting, a fact which exemplifies all of his research.