Josef Albers' groundbreaking series Homage to the Square comprises roughly two thousand oil paintings. His continuous reflections and refinements for more than 25 years inspired numerous young minimal and conceptual artists in their search for a reduced formal language. This outstanding catalogue explores the secret of Albers' subtle aesthetic and unearths its preconditions: What is the significance of the square? How does his impression of color and its use as a material change during this period? Featuring studies on paper, archival materials, as well as essays by internationally leading Albers experts, Margit Rowell and Donal Judd, this richly illustrated publication sheds light on the various inspirations that influenced Albers early on in Europe and later in America, and illustrates the lasting impact of his art and thinking.

“When someone says, ‘red’ (referring to a description or a colour), and when fifty people are listening, you can expect that fifty people will think of red. You can be sure that all of these reds are different.” With the first two sentences that begin a masterpiece of art education, Interaction of Color, it becomes clear how complicated the impact of colour and its visual perception can be. First published in 1963 by Yale University Press in a limited serigraph edition with 150 colour plates, this text became a mass-market paperback with just a few colour plates in 1971. Since then, more than a quarter-million copies of it in various editions have been sold. This influential handbook and teaching tool for artists, instructors, and students is now being republished as a new translation in a much-expanded edition. With a new introduction by Heinz Liesbrock, it contains around sixty illustrations of the colour principles Albers used to demonstrate important axioms and rules of colour and its effects. As did previous editions, this handbook offers indispensable knowledge for everyone who deals with visual communication.