Untitled Abstraction (Mantic) 1940

Josef Albers made this untitled abstraction with oil on paper. There’s something so earnest about those waxy surfaces and insistent rectangles. It’s like he's saying, “Hey, look at this color, really look at it!" I bet he started with a simple shape, maybe that outer blue rectangle, and then just kept reacting to it, pushing and pulling the colors until it felt right, or maybe just interesting. Look at the red fighting the blue, the green pushing against the black. It’s not about a picture of something, but about the pure experience of seeing, the relationships between colours. This reminds me of his famous ‘Homage to the Square’ series, but looser, more playful. You can sense him exploring, experimenting with colours. He wasn’t alone in this pursuit. Mondrian was also interested in geometric shapes, but there's something more tactile and immediate about Albers' touch. It's all part of a conversation, isn't it? Artists seeing what others do and then adding their own little twist.