Josef Albers
German American, 1888-1976

Palatial, from Soft Edge – Hard Edge, 1965
Color screenprint
© 2026 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Perhaps it's time we gave the question what's your favorite color a rest. Joseph Albers certainly had no intention of answering it. After all, isn't color about context and relation? In the later years of his artistic development, Albers decided to remove the extraneous, turning to painting color squares inside other color squares. He is today known for this shape, which is not the subject. Palatial juxtaposes a dominant lighter purple to brick and rust colors. Focusing on the purple, do you remember a heliotrope or a lavender bloom? Do you perhaps think of Lent or some form of regalia? Looking to the center now, the reds cannot be ignored. What do they say to you, together? These three hues, as any three other hues, invite us to abstract ourselves from everything else, and focus on color and light, and the memories and emotions they bring out inside of us.