Why would a great artist paint a square over and over and over again? “The square man” could probably tell you.

That’s what some people call artist Josef Albers. He lived from 1888 to 1976. Mr. Albers wasn’t actually square. But he did paint a lot of them. Mr. Albers worked on his famous series, “Homage to the Square,” for 25 years. Homage means “respect.” The series contains more than 1,000 squares! But Mr. Albers didn’t just paint because he liked squares. He painted because he liked color. He wanted to see what color could do. How did different colors make people feel? What happened when you put certain colors together? What did color really mean?

Mr. Albers believed that God made color. He believed God gave people the ability to enjoy it. In the book of Revelation, God gives the dimensions of the New Jerusalem. God describes that city as squares within other squares. Some people think Mr. Albers designed his paintings the same way. He used math to calculate the size of each square. Then he filled each square with color.

At first, Mr. Albers worked at an art school in Germany. But in 1933, Nazis made the school close. Mr. Albers moved to North Carolina and then to Connecticut. In those places, he taught his students that color could trick the eye. He taught many of them how to look very closely at God’s world. He wanted his students to know that color was more than something to think hard about. It was something to look at in amazement.