Study for Homage to the Square: Despite Mist

The Study for Homage to the Square diptych: Despite Mist, which Josef Albers painted in 1967-1968, is in the Pinault Collection. It attests to the Bauhaus master's fascination with rectilinear abstraction and pure colours. Here, he repeats the squares, giving free rein to endless variations between shapes and tones. “Simultaneous contrast is not just an odd optical phenomenon,” he said. “It is the very heart of painting."

In the late 1940s, Albers began his series of Tribute Squares, a formal pattern that systematised his work until his death in 1976. He made over a thousand geometrically experimental paintings. A colour theorist who moved to the United States in 1933 and taught at Black College Mountain and later at Yale, Albers had a considerable influence on American abstract art.

The Pinault Collection exhibited Study for Homage to the Square: Despite Mist for the first time at the 2009 "Qui a peur des artistes ?" (“Who’s Afraid of Artists?”) show at the Palais des Arts in Dinard.