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Color is fooling us, cheating us, deceiving us… all the time.
—Josef Albers

Exploring the interplay between multiple tones of red, Study to Homage to the Square: Wet and Dry (1969) was created during the period in which Josef Albers was developing his seminal series Homage to the Square (1950–76). In this body of works, Albers investigated the interaction of colors with one another, adjusting hue, tone, and intensity to explore optical effects. In his writings of the same time, the artist also examined the psychological impact of such effects. Albers usually applied paint with a palette knife directly from the tube (with some exceptions) onto a panel prepared with a white ground. Isolated flat squares of color give the illusion of receding or advancing. At times the different sections seem to fuse to generate new colors that appear to hover in front of the picture plane, leaving the viewer with after-images.

The present work comprises three quasi-concentric squares that seem to drift
towards the bottom edge of the painting, painted in varying tones of red. When he finished a painting, Albers would often record the colors used on the back of the work, listing the quantity, type, and even the factory maker of each hue, giving the work both a scientific index and an element of didactic craftsmanship. Yet such precision belies the sensitivity behind each painting’s making. Analyzing Albers’s correspondence, Nicholas Fox Weber has noted some of the crucial terms and ideas in Albers’s conception of an artwork: “the idea that ‘firm and wild’ is valuable, but that [painting] has to grow from ‘warmth and softness’ are the essence of the spirit in which he painted the Homages. Albers believed that artwork, while it should be done well and done carefully, fails if it lacks tenderness.”

This work is registered with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation under JAAF 1976.1.266 and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the Paintings of Josef Albers, 1914–1976.

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