Abstract
The later paintings and prints of Josef Albers, known collectively as the Homage to the Square series, are the
culmination of the artist’s investigations of the power of color to create illusions of depth in abstract painting. The
compositional framework of the Homage series is comprised of only four nested squares of diminishing size, yet this
simple arrangement yields a multitude of possible interpretations of space. The author makes a systematic
examination of this compositional framework and introduces a system for classifying (1) composition types, (2) plane
and frame combinations, (3) near-to-far layering orders, and (4) opaque and translucent orders. The range of
combinatorial possibilities is reduced by perceptual “limiting rules,” yielding a total of 171 distinct illusory spaces
and showing the considerable compositional potential in this simple arrangement of four nested squares.
