This article, following the color approach dedicated to a series of recent Parisian exhibitions, is the fourth in a series commissioned by the ICA-Belgium. It is entirely devoted to the Gerhard Richter retrospective held at the Fondation Louis Vuitton from October 17, 2025, to March 2, 2026.

The Parisian exhibition is unfortunately over, but the artist, who announced in 2017 that he would stop painting, continues to exhibit. This is evidenced by his 100 Works for Berlin at the Neue Nationalgalerie and the exhibition Landschaften presented at David Zwirner Gallery in New York since May 7, 2026.

This retrospective was exceptional: nearly 270 works created between 1962 and 2024, a beautifully orchestrated chronological hanging in Frank Gehry’s spectacular architecture, and a remarkable synthesis of the artist’s multiple explorations. One moves from the figurative universe to the abstract, from a researcher of color and light to an artist who draws inspiration from the Old Masters, from family photographs, or from the depths of his own being. One is consistently struck by his technical mastery and the originality of his approach.

Almost all the reproductions presented in this article are personal photographs taken during the exhibition. Links to museums and galleries also allow you to discover the works in a more official context.

In order to conclude the Colors in Paris cycle, I will later devote an article to the Cherqui Foundation.

Richter at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Is Richter intentionally blurring the tracks to remain impossible to categorize? He is truly an artist who defies all classification, whether through the diversity of genres he tackles, his techniques, or the formats he chooses. Yet, if you know his work even a little, you can instantly recognize his hand in most of his pieces, even if you’ve never seen them before.

Blurring the Lines

What a profusion of means! At times, Richter radically shifts his pictorial technique even within a single work.

Take Hirsch (Deer, 1963) for instance. Painted from a personal black-and-white photograph, it depicts a memory from Dresden, dating from before his move to the West. Richter does not limit himself to a single range of greys: the deer is rendered in cooler tones that set it apart from its surroundings. The graphic treatment differs as well — the animal is almost sculptural, modeled with volume, while the forest is suggested by simple black outlines on a relatively flat background. Only a few branches have any real substance; the rest are mere signs indicating a forest.

It is worth noting that in the David Zwirner version, the greys in the modelling of the deer take on an exaggerated bluish tone, as though the entire image had been corrected to assign a perfectly neutral value to the surrounding forest.

This contrast in treatment perfectly captures the nature of memory: in such an encounter in the woods, only the wild animal truly matters, while the trees remain secondary, almost incidental. Depicting the forest with schematic lines and the deer in volume therefore makes perfect sense.

However, one element disrupts the reading of the painting: a large tree trunk cuts across the image, partially obscuring the deer’s body. This trunk is both transparent — like all the trees in this symbolic forest — and opaque where it passes in front of the animal. This visual paradox inevitably recalls René Magritte’s The Blank Signature (Le Blanc-Seing, 1965).

Is Richter seeking to underline the fragmentation of memory, or the impossibility of fully accessing the recollection of the event?

From Photography to Painting: Inverting the Codes

In his photo-paintings, Gerhard Richter takes a diametrically opposed approach to that of the Pictorialists, the photographer-artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eager to establish photography as a legitimate art form, the Pictorialists tried to emulate painting through noble subjects, carefully composed scenes, and pictorial atmospheres, often intervening manually during development or retouching prints.

Richter does the exact opposite. He deliberately seeks out banal, uncomposed photographs — often amateur snapshots, newspaper images, magazines, or encyclopedic sources. His aim is not to beautify the image but to preserve its cold, almost impersonal neutrality.

This pictorial archive has been meticulously documented since 1962. Since then, the artist has continuously enriched it, eventually granting it the status of a work of art in 1972 under the name Atlas, the basis for his photo-paintings.

All Subjects, All Styles

Who would have dared — except perhaps during the Covid period — to take a roll of toilet paper as a subject? A clear nod to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, Richter painted Klorolle in 1965, shortly after visiting the Duchamp retrospective at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, an exhibition that left a deep impression on him.

In Klorolle, the paint is smoothed across the entire surface, creating its characteristic blurred effect. By contrast, in Himalaya (1968), everything is sharp. There are no gradients. Hard, strongly defined shadows structure the image in a dynamic diagonal composition. The change in style is radical.

In Clouds, painted the same year, the artist uses distinct square brushstrokes placed side by side. One finds both warm and cool greys, but no gradients. Everything moves away from the cliché of a cloud. Doesn’t it look more like shimmering light on the sea? Perhaps he is evoking a sea of clouds?

We are thus unable to identify any single characteristic style, even within this series of grey photo-paintings. Richter constantly eludes our desire to categorize him. Is this a concern for neutrality, a deliberate distance from his subject, or from us, the viewers?

The Quest for Neutrality

Yet, in Aunt Marianne (1965), this pursuit of neutrality seems to fail. The pyramidal composition created by the large white mass enveloping the aunt and her nephew inevitably evokes the aesthetic codes of Renaissance Madonnas and Child.

Although Richter asserts that he wanted to remain distant from this tragic memory — his schizophrenic aunt, who was institutionalized and later euthanized by the Nazis —, the sacred dimension of the relationship unconsciously makes its way through. The film Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away), already mentioned in the “Why Grey?” challenge, captures this tension particularly well.

The Back View Portrait

The portrait is a genre in its own right in the history of art. Some artists had dared to depict their model from behind, but showing the figure with their head turned away from the painter, as if in a deliberate movement, was something entirely new before Gerhard Richter’s photo-painting Betty (1988).

This work — in color this time — once again demonstrates his desire to break the codes. It is not, moreover, the only portrait of his daughter Betty in the retrospective. Two earlier ones are painted in very different styles, as if he felt the need to break the previous code each time.

Twenty years after his first photo-paintings, and beyond the shift from black and white to color, the technique itself had evolved significantly. Previously, large brushstrokes over the subject were enough to create the blur. Betty (1988), by contrast, gives the illusion of photographic precision through subtle variations in blur and sharpness. Rather than a fixed focal point, the image seems to shift its focus somewhere between the painter and the model — perhaps even onto a fold in the garment — creating a quiet sense of instability and distance. One senses the artist’s mastery and precision.

Natalie Arsenow, known for reinterpreting iconic portraits from art history with colored pencils, has made Betty her own. Like many other artists, she has also frequently adopted the back-view portrait in her personal work.

Constraint and Chance

At several points in his career, Richter deliberately imposed strict constraints on himself. For the 1972 Venice Biennale, one key self-imposed rule was to adapt his work to the neoclassical architecture of the German Pavilion in the creation of 48 Portraits of famous men born between 1824 and 1904. Additional constraints included using only documentary photographs in a strictly uniform style, sourced from dictionaries or encyclopedias, and following a rigorous protocol: painting two portraits per day. The number 48 itself appears to have been significant, echoing the color charts he had developed in the 1970s.

Industrial Color Charts

How can one neutralize the emotional power of color? Eliminate any trace of the brushstroke, create perfectly flat surfaces with no accidents, apply industrially coded colors onto standardized supports, without composition — nothing but orderly rows and columns, like shelves in a store. In short, by reproducing industrial color charts and elevating them to the status of artworks through a change of scale and support, in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades.

At the exhibition, one of these color charts is displayed behind a sculpture consisting of four transparent glass panels that can pivot on a horizontal axis. Depending on the angle of the panels, the viewer’s own reflection merges into the scene. A subtle disturbance of reality thus slips into the viewer’s space — a concept that recurs frequently throughout the artist’s work.

Fabricated Color Charts

In a later phase, Richter began producing his own colors through a systematic process. He explains it as follows: “The starting point consists of the four pure colors — red, yellow, green and blue. Their intermediate shades and degrees of luminosity give rise to combinations of 16, 64, 256 and 1024 colors. It would be pointless to use more colors, as they would be impossible to distinguish clearly.” Thus, in 4096 Colors, only 1024 shades are used, but each one is deployed four times. The position of each shade, however, is assigned at random.

The painting is therefore entirely the result of a strict protocol in which randomness intervenes only at the very end.

Is this desire to eradicate all emotion not ultimately pointless? Don’t these color charts nevertheless reveal the painter’s deep fascination with color — like that of a child receiving their first box of crayons? A primal emotion from which the artist has nonetheless tried to erase himself.

The Reign of Grey

In the 1970s, this approach, pushed to its extreme, led Richter to paint entirely grey canvases. He wrote: “Grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent of indifference, non-commitment, and the absence of opinion.”

Grey, the neutral color par excellence. Without any composition, the painting says nothing. Or does it? Perhaps the texture and the material still convey something of the fluctuations of the void that inhabited him.

Although these paintings appear neutral, they nevertheless reveal his state of mind. When he created them, he was going through a profound personal crisis: weariness of photo-painting, a sense of impasse, and deep depression. Grey became for him a gesture of self-destruction or renunciation. Yet, with hindsight, Richter would later acknowledge the importance of this exploration of grey. By continuing to work and confront his own darkness, he eventually found a form of satisfaction in it (see the “Why Grey?” challenge), and managed to emerge from it.

The Color Explosion

Having thus pushed the pursuit of neutrality to its extreme through monochrome grey paintings, Richter makes a complete 180-degree turn. At last, color explodes!

My personal favorite? The watercolors he created in 1984, particularly the Colmar series, inspired by Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. These dynamic compositions, the vibrancy of the colors, the rich texture created by the interaction between ink and oil pastels, and the modesty of the support — everything delights me in this body of work. I must admit I don’t clearly see the connection with the Isenheim Altarpiece. But the idea that a painting from the 16th century can still inspire artists four hundred years later is truly delightful.

Abstraction

Here is what Richter wrote about his new approach to abstraction: “In 1976, I began with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do something I had never permitted myself before: to put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it could never be truly random. It was a way of opening a door for myself. Chance as theme and method. I want to arrive at an image I had not foreseen.”

This abstraction would later be pushed to an extreme form of minimalism and systematization. The abstract painting 724-4 from 1990 was scanned in 2011 and then digitally divided according to a precise iterative process: split into increasingly fine vertical strips, before being reassembled. This gave birth to the Strip series — large digital prints composed of colored bands, often more than four meters long.

Painting or creating according to a process that is both tightly constrained and occasionally open to chance seems to be the best solution for Richter in his attempt to erase his own trace: “The paintings should be there to show themselves, not to show me.”

Reflections and Reality

Gerhard Richter has long been interested in reflections and the fundamental ambiguity between reality and representation. For him, the mirror serves as a powerful metaphor for human perception: we believe we see reality in it, but what it shows us are merely fragments of the world and ever-changing appearances. The mirror thus represents, in his eyes, an ideal form of art — immediate, neutral, and inherently multiple. In turn, he famously stated: “Every painting is a mirror.”

Here are two sculptures made of colored glass panels featured in the exhibition. One is titled Brown and Blue, the other Red and Green. The panels of each diptych are positioned at a right angle, adding another layer of ambiguity as they reflect each other.

The choice of these color pairs is certainly not accidental. Deeply rooted in color theory, the brown/blue pairing suggests the opposition between warm and cold. As for red/green, it is the most classic example of “complementary” colors (see here).

These transparent or colored glass sculptures appear in several rooms of the Foundation. Are they a constant reminder of the artist’s preoccupations? Or a way for him to include us in his pictorial space so that we may appropriate it more fully?

Reflections and superimpositions are not limited to the sculptures; they also appear in his paintings. Particularly intriguing in this regard is the series of portraits Richter dedicated to Gilbert & George, a couple of artists and friends of the painter. They form a very particular kind of “double.” Since meeting, they have built their artistic identity around the idea that they are no longer two distinct artists, but one single artist composed of two people. Richter captured this duality perfectly by playing with superimpositions and reflections.

Architecture and Landscape

Richter is just as comfortable painting architecture as he is painting landscape.

In Besetztes Haus (1989), the two genres enter into dialogue: the façade of a squatted house occupies only the left half of the composition, while the right half opens onto trees bathed in an almost magical pink-orange light. What could have been a raw, sociological image becomes a enigmatic scene in which architecture and nature coexist in a strange harmony between order and chaos.

This permeability between the built and the natural reappears in his aerial views of cities or urban ensembles, which sometimes imperceptibly slide toward abstraction.

The two landscapes below further illustrate this oscillation between abstraction and figuration. Observe how different the pictorial techniques are.

In Parkstück (1971), composed of three panels each measuring 300 × 125 cm, the painting is gestural, almost wild. Broad brushstrokes define the ground in large bands, dark in the foreground and lighter in the middle. Parkstück offers a synthetic vision, with a limited but effective palette in which the pink of the foliage responds to the tender green of the wild grasses. One is not far from abstraction.

Meadowland (1985), on the other hand, belongs to his more realistic photo-paintings. More modest in size (though still nearly one square meter), it gives off a more contemplative, even melancholic atmosphere. The rendering is soft, slightly hazy at the horizon, without being as blurred as the photo-paintings of the 1960s. The sky occupies a predominant place, and yet almost nothing happens in it. No dramatic clouds, no expressive contrasts. On the contrary, it seems to emanate a diffuse, captivating light.

Light and Matter

The light in the seascape below recalls that of Meadowland (1985). Here, all points of reference have disappeared, leaving us facing immensity rendered through perfectly smooth paint. In another seascape, by contrast, we encounter a heavy sky and a sea treated as raw matter.

Richter is undeniably a master of light, a distant heir to the German Romantic tradition embodied by Caspar David Friedrich. He captures subtle atmospheric effects with great dexterity. One could almost feel the cold looking at Davos (1981) where the almost unreal light seems to dissolve the forms of the mountain landscape.

Past and present

Gerhard Richter’s work is nourished by an ongoing dialogue with time: the time of the Old Masters, that of his contemporaries, that of the recent past, and that of the darkest chapters of German history.

Dialogue with the great masters

In the section Constraint and Chance, I already referred to Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece as a source of inspiration. In fact, Richter is deeply shaped by the history of art, without ever falling into mere copying or pastiche.

Among the most explicit expressions of this legacy is the series Annunciation after Titian (1973), of which the five versions are presented. Faithful to his practice, Richter first developed a two-metre-long painting from a reproduction, a postcard brought back from Venice. Initially painted only for himself, and dissatisfied with the result, he made five variations, with different degrees of abstraction.

My favorite is certainly version 344-2, for its energetic gesture, the partial dissolution of the forms, and above all the sense of movement in the appearance of the angel. Here below, the version 343-4, the last and the most abstract of the series.

Moreover, Richter maintains a constant dialogue with several great masters. Already mentioned above in the section on landscapes, Caspar David Friedrich occupies a particularly important place. One could also find echoes of Vermeer in the silent intimacy of certain portraits, and of the Flemish and Spanish vanitas tradition in his candles and skulls, which are also present in the exhibition.

Dialogue with contemporary artists

Richter is equally engaged in a sustained dialogue with his contemporaries and with the immediately preceding generation. A friend of Gilbert & George, he shares with them a reflection on the double. Faced with Marcel Duchamp, who had proclaimed the death of painting, Richter responds forcefully: his famous Nude Descending a Staircase (1966) directly alludes to Duchamp’s painting. It constitutes an ironic and paradoxical affirmation of painting’s vitality.

At the same time, he finds in the composer John Cage a true source of inspiration. The acceptance of chance, silence, and indeterminacy represents for him a liberating way of thinking, one that profoundly influences his abstract work and his conception of the artwork as an open process.

The recent past

Richter does not hesitate to confront traumatic historical events. With the series October 18, 1977 (1988), he approaches the drama of the Red Army Faction (RAF) from a distance: the archival photographs are blurred, faded, almost illegible, as if collective memory itself were clouded. Regarding these paintings, he wrote in his Notes in 1988: “[…] they are the expression of a deep and mute emotion, an almost desperate attempt to give form to feelings of compassion, pain, and horror […]”

Later, he responded to the September 11, 2001 attacks with September (2005). The event became pure abstraction. And yet the painting remains clearly identifiable, both as a tragedy and as representative of Richter’s style.

In any case, Richter refuses sensationalism, reminding us of the impossibility of fully grasping reality while affirming the necessity of not forgetting.

The shameful past

In the face of the Shoah, Richter adopts a particularly painful position. In 2014, he created a series of large abstract paintings based on photographs of the Birkenau camps taken by the Sonderkommandos. After numerous attempts, he abandoned all realistic figuration, judging that no image can truly “show” horror.

These monumental, dark, striated abstractions become paradoxical sites of memory: they conceal and reveal at the same time, refusing to turn suffering into spectacle while preventing oblivion. This is undoubtedly one of Richter’s most radical and respectful confrontations with the darkest past of Germany.

Analog and digital

Richter began his photo-paintings in the era of analog photography. In painting, he gave us all its aspects, including artifacts such as the unsightly shadows created by flashes. These are the traces of an era. High-sensitivity film was not yet available, and only professional flashes, sometimes aimed at the ceiling, provided diffuse light.

Through Strich (auf Blau) [Line (on Blue), 1979], he explores how the gesture of a line is altered by the photographic enlargement process. The original is a painted line on cardboard measuring 3.3 x 47.5 cm. Richter turns it into a work 1.90 m high and 20 meters long. At that scale, the line seems to have been made with a broad brush, but this is an illusion: in reality, the seemingly rough texture was produced with small brushes. In the detail below (on the right), you may think you are seeing a poor focus in the photograph; in fact, that is not the case. Richter did not create a deliberate blur — he simply copied the blur produced by the analog enlargement process.

Apart from the Strip series, Gerhard Richter explored digital imagery very little. It is a pity; I would have loved for him to immortalize in paint the horrible artifacts of JPEG compression, itself a witness to the beginnings of digital image-making. But, as a worthy heir to Richter, the artist Enda O’Donoghue has done so.

Conclusion

At the end of this retrospective, one impression dominates: that of an artist who spent his life exploring major pairs of opposites — figuration and abstraction, sharpness and blur, systematic and random, reality and reflection, constraint and chance. Richter never stopped moving through these tensions without ever settling in one camp.

I see this less as a strategy for obscuring the issue than as a profound distrust of any form of certainty. He refuses to take sides and affirms, through his work itself, that reality is too complex to be enclosed within a single image.

An absolute technical master, he painted everything, explored everything. His work opened paths that many contemporary artists are now following. We leave this retrospective with a blurred image of the man, but with the certainty of having encountered one of the greatest image-makers of our time.

And that is probably what he wants, he who once declared: “I have no program, no style, no direction. I like the undefined, the boundless, the continual uncertainty.”

Sources

Gerhard Richter, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Le Journal no. 20, 2025.
Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Ed. Hazan, 2010.
Arte documentary: Ema dans l’escalier.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Grok (developed by xAI) for the quality of its answers and for the many exchanges that enriched the documentation for this article. Thanks also to Perplexity for help with the English translation. Finally, thanks to the Gerhard Richter Archive Dresden for permission to publish my photographs taken at the exhibition.

We invite you to read an article from the Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, this time by Maria Zurbuchen-Henz.

Introducing Marlène Samson, one of the winners of our Albers Accessibility Awards. Last call for our Albers Accessibility Awards for early-career practitioners, the applications will close at midnight of June 1.

Don’t miss our Colour Circle Book Club today!

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Collection of Essays on Albers

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

Hommage to Josef Albers

By Maria Zurbuchen-Henz

Sharp-cut grey, blue, white and light blue or vibrant transitions of purple, magenta and pink - as a viewer, I feel the magic of the colours; as an architect, I am, in a way, drawn into a three-dimensional polychrome space.

Albers’ Homage for a Square series is based on geometrically composed figures with no overlapping colours. The surface of the canvas is articulated by contiguous yet distinct, independent colours. In addition to the picturesque effect and the play of light, Albers introduces the illusion of perspective. The artist does not confine himself to arranging concentric squares; on the contrary, the squares are shifted and grounded in perspective. Familiar with the drawing conventions of diagonal lines and the vanishing point, we can read the pictorial space as an architectural one. As the vanishing point corresponding to eye level is set low, one gets the impression of a deep, relatively high polychrome interior that one could walk into. (You can easily check that this is true, by turning the picture upside down, in that case, you fly into the picture).

Long regarded as opposing forces, Albers considers the concepts of Venetian colore and Florentine disegno as equally important. This is precisely what makes his two-dimensional pictorial space relevant for comparison with three-dimensional architectural space. Inspired by Albers’ paintings, I would like to extend his topic of Colour Interaction into the polychrome interior. What is the common ground between visual art and architecture? Is it possible to transfer painting concepts to architecture?

Pictorial space functions as an optical illusion of volume and depth. On the canvas, colours lie side by side on a single plane; but the painter can break free from the constraints of two-dimensionality by choosing the right palette.

Architectural space is real, its elements are mass and void, light and shade. How does colour bring an additional quality into built space? What happens when you add illusionistic effects to the physical space using colour? According to Le Corbusier, the lit wall constitutes the architectural game. Colour is another form of light and shadow and therefore space-forming. Blue steps back, red steps forward: the transforming effect on volume, space and ambiance is based on optical illusion, creating in the mind another appreciation of the object. Since colour modifies the form, the spatial principle and the colour concept are inseparably linked.

In architecture, colours don’t lie side by side on a singular plane, but they are arranged in layers extending into the depth, face each other, or interact diagonally across the corner. That is why the interaction of colour in a built environment can be far more complex than in a painting.

Material or immaterial? In the discussion about the role of colour in architecture, we need a deeper understanding of what colour is and how it works with both its tangible and intangible properties. On the one hand, we deal with colour in its material appearance, the color pigment that forms the outermost skin of architecture as a painted layer. In contrast to this - or even as a complement – is the colour of light. As an immaterial phenomenon, it influences the colour effect of an architectural object. A coloured light can occur as a concomitant of a coloured paint (for example, in the form of radiation) or also as an independent light-colour. What is the relationship between the geometry of the room, the colour tone and the light effect? How far does the sphere of influence of applied colour go in an interior space? Sculptural effects are enhanced by light-dark contrasts while pictorial effects by colour gradients or colour contrasts. Bright colours can produce atmospheric colour-light impressions varying from sharpness to blurriness. To summarise, subtractive colour mixing of pigments (material) and additive light-mixing (immaterial) do not have the same impact, however, both phenomena can occur simultaneously.

Should colour strengthen and clarify the architectural form, comment and interpret it in a playful way, or maybe even manipulate it? What is certain however, is that colour is very important because it acts strongly upon our sensitivities. We could take Le Corbusier and Barragán as examples. Both need white as a neutral background, but their use of colour is quite different. In Le Corbusier’s design method, manipulations of spatial perception are allowed, but they must not interfere with the form through strong side effects. In order to maintain the tectonic character of his architecture, Le Corbusier would use sharp-cut, independent colour surfaces (bound to the entire wall as a whole) and apply a well-tempered palette originated from traditional mineral pigments. In contrast, the Mexican architect Luis Barrágan is not afraid of bold, artificial colours and vibrant colour-light effects. In his monastery chapel, he introduces yellow light produced by coloured glass panes and a golden altar triptych. The yellow light blends with the colours of the walls, causing their surfaces to shimmer: this creates a magical chromatic continuity that, as the day progresses, imperceptibly traverses an infinite spectrum of yellow, red and orange reaching its climax in gold.

This year the Albers Workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, organised by ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum, offers an opportunity for design-related experimenting with cardboard, coloured paper strips and plexiglass.

In terms of colour and light, practical workshops show that the architectural model, sometimes hastily dismissed as anachronistic, still provides irreplaceable insights. The main advantages of experimenting with analog models are being very close, at eye level, and obtaining an instant response.

- Maria Zurbuchen-Henz is architect in Lausanne and professor at Haus der Farbe Fachschule für Gestaltung in Handwerk und Architektur in Zürich, Switzerland. She conveys colour culture in public spaces and buildings and leads workshops on the subject of colour and space, at Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart (2026, 2024), Pavillon Le Corbusier Zürich (2021), Universiteit Antwerpen (2019), Université de Strasbourg (2017). Together with Juan Serra Lluch, she will co-lead the workshop Colour in Space, June 27-28, at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop, Germany.

More about the workshop:

Introducing Winners of Albers Accessibility Awards

Marlène Samson

We are happy to introduce to you one of the winners of our Albers Accessibility Awards. With the support of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, the awards aim to support the next generation of creative talent in accessing the high-level colour education.

Marlène Samson is an interior architect based in Brussels, with a professional practice extending across Belgium, France and Germany. Currently preparing a PhD in architecture within the LRA at ENSA Toulouse, under the supervision of Andrea Urlberger and Laura Girard, in partnership with Les Chaux de Saint-Astier, one of France’s leading lime and render manufacturers.

Entitled Saying Colour, Making Colour: Urban Colour Charters Challenged by Materiality, the research investigates how colour is being transformed from prescription to built reality. Through a comparative study of the urban colour charters of Toulouse and Bordeaux, the project explores how colour, once defined in regulatory or advisory documents, becomes material, spatial and perceptible architecture.

I am very happy to take part in the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space and to have been selected for the Albers Accessibility Awards. I would like to thank the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum for supporting and highlighting emerging research such as mine, especially within the context of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, whose legacy resonates deeply with the theoretical foundations of my PhD research.

This work enters into dialogue with the practice of Anni Albers, whose explorations already questioned the relationships between material, fabrication and the perception of colour. Just as weaving allows colour to emerge through structure, fibre and process, lime reveals hues that are intrinsically tied to material composition and modes of fabrication. The research therefore raises a broader question: to what extent can an urban colour charter truly account for the material processes that shape colour itself?

Participating in this workshop, surrounded by specialists such as Maria Zurbuchen-Henz and Juan Serra Lluch, undoubtedly constitutes one of the best possible introductions to my upcoming research project.

-Marlène Samson

LinkedIn / Instagram / Saint Astier / Laboratoire de Recherche en Architecture - ENSA Toulouse

Last Call: Albers Accessibility Awards for Early-Career Professionals

The applications close on June 1, at 23:59 CEST.

The Albers Accessibility Awards, supported by the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, are dedicated to early-career professionals in architecture, design, and art.

The awards offer two subsidised places for our upcoming two-day intensive workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, taking place at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop, Germany, on June 27–28, 2026. Successful applicants pay a reduced fee of just €40 (standard fee: €350).

*Please note that travel and accommodation are not covered by the award.

Who can apply

Practitioners in architecture, design, or art who completed their degree no more than five years ago (graduating year 2020 or later).

How to apply

Submit the following to ica@ica-belgium.org with the subject line: Albers Accessibility Award – Young Professional – [Your Full Name]

1. A short essay (max. 250 words): Describe a question about colour in space that is currently relevant to your professional practice, and explain how participating in this workshop would help you explore or advance it.

2. A link to your professional profile (LinkedIn, portfolio website, or institutional page).

Colour Circle Book Club Meeting Today

Join us for our first Colour Circle Book Club meeting this Sunday, 31st of May, at 14:00 CEST. We will meet online and we hope many of you will be able to join us.

The book we will be discussing is Color for Architects by Juan Serra Lluch.

Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book yet, there will be plenty to talk about. We hope you will tell us about your favourite books on colour, about the ones you are reading now and those that you would very much like to read. As all colour and book lovers know, there is always more to learn and see. Let us chose our next book together!

ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers have already received the email with the link to join the online meeting. If you haven’t received it, contact us at ica@ica-belgium.org.

As the Colour Circle Book Club is designed to be private, there will be no recording. To keep it relaxed and safe, it is open only to ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers (for € 5 per month or € 45 per year). To join the Colour Circle Book Club, become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber.

More information:

We look forward to meeting you this Sunday and let colour spark new conversations!

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

Marlène Samson is an interior architect based in Brussels, with a professional practice extending across Belgium, France and Germany. Currently preparing a PhD in architecture within the LRA at ENSA Toulouse, under the supervision of Andrea Urlberger and Laura Girard, in partnership with Les Chaux de Saint-Astier, one of France’s leading lime and render manufacturers.

Entitled Saying Colour, Making Colour: Urban Colour Charters Challenged by Materiality, the research investigates how colour is being transformed from prescription to built reality. Through a comparative study of the urban colour charters of Toulouse and Bordeaux, the project explores how colour, once defined in regulatory or advisory documents, becomes material, spatial and perceptible architecture.

I am very happy to take part in the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space and to have been selected for the Albers Accessibility Awards. I would like to thank the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum for supporting and highlighting emerging research such as mine, especially within the context of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, whose legacy resonates deeply with the theoretical foundations of my PhD research.

This work enters into dialogue with the practice of Anni Albers, whose explorations already questioned the relationships between material, fabrication and the perception of colour. Just as weaving allows colour to emerge through structure, fibre and process, lime reveals hues that are intrinsically tied to material composition and modes of fabrication. The research therefore raises a broader question: to what extent can an urban colour charter truly account for the material processes that shape colour itself?

Participating in this workshop, surrounded by specialists such as Maria Zurbuchen-Henz and Juan Serra Lluch, undoubtedly constitutes one of the best possible introductions to my upcoming research project.

-Marlène Samson

LinkedIn / Instagram / Saint Astier / Laboratoire de Recherche en Architecture - ENSA Toulouse

Join us for our first Colour Circle Book Club meeting this Sunday. We will meet online and we hope many of you will be able to join us. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book we will be talking about, there will be plenty to talk about. We hope you will tell us about your favourite books on colour, about the ones you are reading now and those that you would very much like to read. As all colour and book lovers know, there is always more to learn and see.

The Colour Circle Book Club is designed to be private, there will be no recording. To keep it safe, it is open only to ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers (for € 5 per month or € 45 per year). To join the Colour Circle Book Club, become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber.

The book we will be discussing is Color for Architects by Juan Serra Lluch. Juan spoke about it at our Sunday Morning Colour Talk on the 8th of February.

See the recording here:

Colour for Architects

Juan Serra Lluch

English version, published by Princeton Architectural Press, May 2019

You can buy it here:

Standaard Boekhandel / Biblio / Architectura & Natura

French version published by Le Moniteur: Utiliser la couleur dans un projet d’architecture

You can buy it here:

Libris.nl / Athenaeum Scheltema / Filigranes / Le Moniteur

*ICA-Belgium is an affiliate of Routledge, Libris and Atheneum Scheltema. We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through these links, at no cost to you, which helps support our mission.

What is a Colour Circle Book Club?

At ICA-Belgium we believe that colour becomes richer when we explore it collectively. That’s why we have launched the Colour Circle - ICA-Belgium’s Colour Book Club - a space where you can discover inspiring books on colour, exchange insights, and reflect on how colour shapes our work, our thinking, and our daily lives.

Each session focuses on a selected book: sometimes a classic, sometimes a surprising new title. We read, discuss, and review together - always with an open mind and a playful spirit. Whether you’re a colour professional, an artist, a designer, or simply someone who loves the poetry and psychology of colour, you’re warmly invited to join.

The Colour Circle Book Club is designed to be:

• Accessible - no prior expertise required

• Interactive - conversations, reflections, and shared discoveries

• Inspiring - from colour theory to perception, from art to science

• Community‑building - connecting people who see the world through a colourful lens

• Private - for ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers (monthly or yearly) - with hybrid attendance, (online & in person in Belgium).

Whether you are on the other side of the world or in Belgium, we plan to find a way to connect and come together.

For those in Belgium (or willing to come for a visit), we hope to gather in a smaller circle at our members’ homes (so we can, at the same time, have the opportunity to enjoy each other’s colour book collections), while inviting anyone who can’t be present in person, to join us online.

We look forward to reading together and letting colour spark new conversations.

Let us know what colour related books you would like to read and discuss. We will try to invite the authors to join, when possible.

To join the Colour Circle Book Club, become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber.

Find out more about the Colour Circle Book Club:

We hope to see many of you and are looking forward to colourful conversations!

Our Open Call for Albers Accessibility Awards with focus on early-career practitioners is here! We invite you to read another article from the Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, this time by our own Inez Michiels. Check the international symposia dedicated to colour and an exhibition that caught our attention.

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Open Call for Early-Career Professionals

ICA-Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum (German Colour Association), with the generous support of the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, are pleased to open a second call for the Albers Accessibility Awards - this time dedicated to young and early-career professionals in architecture, design, and art.

Two subsidised places are available for our upcoming two-day intensive workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, taking place at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop, Germany, on June 27–28, 2026.

The Awards

Thanks to the Albers Accessibility Fund, successful applicants will pay a reduced fee of just €40 (standard fee: €350).

*Please note that travel and accommodation are not covered by the award.

Who can apply

Practitioners in architecture, design, or art who completed their degree no more than five years ago (graduating year 2020 or later).

How to apply

Submit the following to ica@ica-belgium.org with the subject line: Albers Accessibility Award – Young Professional – [Your Full Name]

1. A short essay (max. 250 words): Describe a question about colour in space that is currently relevant to your professional practice, and explain how participating in this workshop would help you explore or advance it.

2. A link to your professional profile (LinkedIn, portfolio website, or institutional page).

Collection of Essays on Albers

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

Hommage to Josef Albers

By Inez Michiels

Interaction of Color by Josef Albers was a relatively late discovery for me. My artistic education was shaped primarily by The Art of Color by Johannes Itten. In this work, Itten combines theoretical reflections with visual demonstrations that explore colour interaction through his theory of the Seven Colour Contrasts. Yet the approaches of these two artists and colour theorists differ in important ways. Itten’s colour theory is a structured system explaining how colours are organized, how they contrast and harmonize, and how they can produce expressive and psychological effects in art. His ideas reflect the early twentieth-century belief that visual language could reveal deeper psychological or universal truths.

Neither Itten nor Albers sought to express personal emotion in the gestural sense associated with the artists of Abstract Expressionism. Their emphasis, however, differs. Itten combined perceptual study with expressive interpretation, whereas Albers concentrated almost entirely on perception itself. He was fascinated by the relativity and instability of colour, arguing that colour is fundamentally deceptive: it is almost never perceived as it physically is, but always in relation to its surroundings. In this sense, Albers’ work can be interpreted as a critique of Bauhaus colour theories associated with Itten and Wassily Kandinsky. Rather than proposing universal symbolic meanings, Albers emphasized experimental observation. For him, meaning emerges solely from context, from perceptual relationships.

While Albers successfully dismantled what he saw as the rigid or mystical aspects of earlier colour systems, his focus on contextual relativity may obscure another dimension of colour perception. Contemporary neuroscience suggests that human perception is not entirely neutral. Evolutionary biology appears to have shaped certain physical and emotional responses to particular wavelengths. From this perspective, some of Itten’s ideas, often dismissed as dogmatic or mystical, may instead reflect intuitive observations of underlying biological tendencies. A more complete understanding of colour may therefore lie in bridging these perspectives: acknowledging Albers’ insight that context profoundly alters perception, while also recognizing that biology provides a foundational emotional framework. Otherwise, the postmodern rejection of universals risks discarding genuine biological patterns along with outdated theoretical assumptions.

Albers’ major contribution lies above all in his pedagogy. He repeatedly emphasized that colour cannot truly be understood through description alone; it must be tested through observation and experiment. In this sense, his teaching remains remarkably relevant today.

The workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, organized by ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum and inspired by Interaction of Color, offers an opportunity to revisit these questions through practice. By working with colour in spatial and perceptual exercises, participants can experience firsthand the shifting relationships that fascinated Albers, while also considering how recent insights from neuroscience and biological psychology suggest that our perception of colour is shaped not only by context but also by deeper physiological and evolutionary responses.

-Inez Michiels read Colour and Semantic Design at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels and has been an internationally visiting professor at universities and colleges, including MICA (Baltimore), LASALLE (Signapore), and the University of Antwerp. Her research on nonverbal communication has guided design agencies and companies. She is the author of Symbol Constructions and The Design Semantics Knowledge Graph. She is also co-founder and serves as the secretary general of the Interdisciplinary Colour Association Belgium (ICA-Belgium).

Members’ News

Felix A. D’Haeseleer

Workshop Color: words, relations, boundaries, interactions

24 October 2026 (1st meeting) and 21 November 2026 (2nd meeting), Brussels

Limited to 6 participants to ensure personalized instruction.

This specialized, two-part seminar offers a methodical dive into color theory, sharpening the “eye” through practical application and collective analysis.

The seminar explores color not as an isolated element, but as a relationship. Key topics include:

• Comparative Analysis: Distinguishing and describing color characteristics.

• Boundary Dynamics: Modulating the appearance of boundaries through coherent color relationships to organize space.

• Interactions: Predicting and managing the effects between contiguous colors.

This intensive program consists of two inseparable 7-hour sessions spaced 30 days apart.

Inquiries & Registration: For more information see Le Séminaire de Couleur or contact Felix D’Haeseleer directly at Felix.A.DHaseleer@gmail.com.

Colour Circle Book Club

At ICA-Belgium we believe that colour becomes richer when we explore it collectively. The Colour Circle - ICA-Belgium’s Colour Book Club - is a space where you can discover inspiring books on colour, exchange insights, and reflect on how colour shapes our work, our thinking, and our daily lives.

The Colour Circle Book Club is open to ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers (monthly or yearly). The first meeting will take place online.

Find more information about the Colour Circle Book Club here.

Enjoy 20% OFF all Print + eBooks at Routledge, across all markets, along with Free Standard Shipping. Offer valid until 31st May 2026 (23:59 EST).

*Transparency Disclosure: ICA-Belgium is an affiliate of Routledge. We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through these links, at no cost to you, which helps support our mission.

Colour Exhibitions on our radar

Into the Blue

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, UK, until 20 September 2026

Dive into the deep blue sea and sky. When we look up on a cloudless day we see bright blue sky, and at night the firmament is inky blue. We are surrounded by blue. For this new display, curator and colour historian Dr Alexandra Loske has chosen blue drawings, prints and paintings from Brighton & Hove Museums’ collections. Each one tells a different blue story.

More information: https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/event/into-the-blue/

Symposium Color Impact 2026: Defining Color

June 24, 2026 12:00pm - 5:00pm EDT, online

By the Inter-Society Color Council

Featuring presenters from a range of fields and practices, speaking on how they define color in their daily workflow. Q&A to follow each session. We will wrap up the day with Colorful Connections, an opportunity to network with ISCC members and Symposium attendees.

More information and registration: https://iscc.org/Color-Impact

AlC2026 Midterm Meeting

September 3-5, 2026, Florence, Italy

Limited to 150 participants

The AIC 2026 Midterm Meeting is dedicated to the theme of Color and Cultural Heritage.

The official opening ceremony will take place in the magnificent Salone dei cinquecento at Palazzo Vecchio, one of Florence’s most iconic and historic venues.

This meeting offers a unique opportunity for researchers, professionals, and enthusiasts to engage in deep discussions on the latest advancements in colour science, digital imaging, lighting, and cultural heritage preservation.

The event will feature general sessions alongside three special sessions, each addressing key areas of research:

• Color Photography and Film – Chairs: Alice Plutino & Barbara Cattaneo

• Shedding a new Light on Cultural Heritage – Chairs: Andrea Siniscalco & Laura Bellia

• The Colors of Historical Cities – Chairs: Maurizio De Vita

• More information and registration: https://www.aic2026.org

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

Sharp-cut grey, blue, white and light blue or vibrant transitions of purple, magenta and pink - as a viewer, I feel the magic of the colours; as an architect, I am, in a way, drawn into a three-dimensional polychrome space.

Albers’ Homage for a Square series is based on geometrically composed figures with no overlapping colours. The surface of the canvas is articulated by contiguous yet distinct, independent colours. In addition to the picturesque effect and the play of light, Albers introduces the illusion of perspective. The artist does not confine himself to arranging concentric squares; on the contrary, the squares are shifted and grounded in perspective. Familiar with the drawing conventions of diagonal lines and the vanishing point, we can read the pictorial space as an architectural one. As the vanishing point corresponding to eye level is set low, one gets the impression of a deep, relatively high polychrome interior that one could walk into. (You can easily check that this is true, by turning the picture upside down, in that case, you fly into the picture).

Long regarded as opposing forces, Albers considers the concepts of Venetian colore and Florentine disegno as equally important. This is precisely what makes his two-dimensional pictorial space relevant for comparison with three-dimensional architectural space. Inspired by Albers’ paintings, I would like to extend his topic of Colour Interaction into the polychrome interior. What is the common ground between visual art and architecture? Is it possible to transfer painting concepts to architecture?

Pictorial space functions as an optical illusion of volume and depth. On the canvas, colours lie side by side on a single plane; but the painter can break free from the constraints of two-dimensionality by choosing the right palette.

Architectural space is real, its elements are mass and void, light and shade. How does colour bring an additional quality into built space? What happens when you add illusionistic effects to the physical space using colour? According to Le Corbusier, the lit wall constitutes the architectural game. Colour is another form of light and shadow and therefore space-forming. Blue steps back, red steps forward: the transforming effect on volume, space and ambiance is based on optical illusion, creating in the mind another appreciation of the object. Since colour modifies the form, the spatial principle and the colour concept are inseparably linked.

In architecture, colours don’t lie side by side on a singular plane, but they are arranged in layers extending into the depth, face each other, or interact diagonally across the corner. That is why the interaction of colour in a built environment can be far more complex than in a painting.

Material or immaterial? In the discussion about the role of colour in architecture, we need a deeper understanding of what colour is and how it works with both its tangible and intangible properties. On the one hand, we deal with colour in its material appearance, the color pigment that forms the outermost skin of architecture as a painted layer. In contrast to this - or even as a complement – is the colour of light. As an immaterial phenomenon, it influences the colour effect of an architectural object. A coloured light can occur as a concomitant of a coloured paint (for example, in the form of radiation) or also as an independent light-colour. What is the relationship between the geometry of the room, the colour tone and the light effect? How far does the sphere of influence of applied colour go in an interior space? Sculptural effects are enhanced by light-dark contrasts while pictorial effects by colour gradients or colour contrasts. Bright colours can produce atmospheric colour-light impressions varying from sharpness to blurriness. To summarize, subtractive color mixing of pigments (material) and additive light-mixing (immaterial) do not have the same impact, however, both phenomena can occur simultaneously.

Should colour strengthen and clarify the architectural form, comment and interpret it in a playful way, or maybe even manipulate it? What is certain however, is that colour is very important because it acts strongly upon our sensitivities. We could take Le Corbusier and Barragán as examples. Both need white as a neutral background, but their use of colour is quite different. In Le Corbusier’s design method, manipulations of spatial perception are allowed, but they must not interfere with the form through strong side effects. In order to maintain the tectonic character of his architecture, Le Corbusier would use sharp-cut, independent colour surfaces (bound to the entire wall as a whole) and apply a well-tempered palette originated from traditional mineral pigments. In contrast, the Mexican architect Luis Barrágan is not afraid of bold, artificial colours and vibrant colour-light effects. In his monastery chapel, he introduces yellow light produced by coloured glass panes and a golden altar triptych. The yellow light blends with the colours of the walls, causing their surfaces to shimmer: this creates a magical chromatic continuity that, as the day progresses, imperceptibly traverses an infinite spectrum of yellow, red and orange reaching its climax in gold.

This year the Albers Workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, organized by ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum, offers an opportunity for design-related experimenting with cardboard, coloured paper strips and plexiglass.

In terms of colour and light, practical workshops show that the architectural model, sometimes hastily dismissed as anachronistic, still provides irreplaceable insights. The main advantages of experimenting with analog models are being very close, at eye level, and obtaining an instant response.

Maria Zurbuchen-Henz is architect in Lausanne and professor at Haus der Farbe Fachschule für Gestaltung in Handwerk und Architektur Zürich in Switzerland. She conveys colour culture in public spaces and buildings and leads workshops on the subject of colour and space at Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart (2026, 2024), Pavillon Le Corbusier Zürich (2021), Universiteit Antwerpen (2019), Université de Strasbourg (2017)

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

For more information about the upcoming workshop, see:

ICA-Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum (German Colour Association), with the generous support of the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, are pleased to open a second call for the Albers Accessibility Awards - this time dedicated to young professionals in architecture, design, and art.

Two subsidised places are available for our upcoming two-day intensive workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, taking place at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop, Germany, on June 27–28, 2026.

The Awards

Thanks to the Albers Accessibility Fund, successful applicants will pay a reduced fee of just €40 (standard fee: €350).

*Please note that travel and accommodation are not covered by the award.

Who can apply

Practitioners in architecture, design, or art who completed their degree no more than five years ago (graduating year 2020 or later).

How to apply

Submit the following to ica@ica-belgium.org with the subject line: Albers Accessibility Award – Young Professional – [Your Full Name]

1. A short essay (max. 250 words): Describe a question about colour in space that is currently relevant to your professional practice, and explain how participating in this workshop would help you explore or advance it.

2. A link to your professional profile (LinkedIn, portfolio website, or institutional page).

Workshop Details

For the full workshop programme, lecturer biographies, and registration, visit

We look forward to welcoming early-career practitioners to Bottrop this June - to learn in the place where his work lives.

More about:

Anni and Josef Albers Foundation: albersfoundation.org

Deutsches Farbenzentrum (DFZ): deutsches-farbenzentrum.de

Interdisciplinary Colour Association (ICA-Belgium): ica-belgium.org

We invite you to read another article from the Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, this time by Lina Schmidt, and check interesting colour related exhibitions. Students, don’t miss the extended deadline and last call for the Albers Accessibility Awards!

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Collection of Essays on Albers

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

Hommage to Josef Albers

By Lina Schmidt

“In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is – as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.”

– Interaction of Color, Josef Albers

With this observation, Albers points to something fundamental: colour is never isolated. It emerges through relationships and is shaped by contrast, surroundings, light, material, proportion, and spatial context. To work with colour therefore means developing sensitivity not to colour as a fixed entity, but to colour as a living and active perception.

A central aspect of Albers’ teaching is that practice precedes theory. Colour cannot be fully understood through concepts alone; it must be experienced, tested, and compared through observation. Insight grows from experience, and evaluation from comparison. In this sense, colour is not simply knowledge to be acquired, but a perceptual discipline that must be trained. Eye and brain must learn to observe carefully to assess the complexity of colour experience.

This emphasis on observation and experience remains essential for designers. Colours shift when light, neighbouring hues, surfaces, or scale change. Colour decisions therefore require time and an iterative process of observing, experimenting, and re-evaluating. Analytical skill in colour does not arise from rules, but from repeated practice. Colour should involve flexible imagination, invention, and the ability to think in situations rather than formulas. This is where his work still feels radical as he resists the idea that colour can be reduced to recipes, harmonies, or universal systems. Instead, he invites us to search for unexpected relationships, fostering innovation, analytical comparison and fantasy.

At the same time, I would like to add colour practice should not be guided by personal taste alone. It must remain attentive to those who inhabit the spaces, objects, and atmospheres we create. Colour perception is not only an optical event; it is also social, emotional, spatial, and cultural. It extends into lived space and becomes part of how we orient ourselves, of how we feel, and of how we relate to the world. Albers asked us to replace retrospection with introspection. That remains a powerful invitation. But today, perhaps this is not enough. Alongside introspection, we also need projection: a way of looking forward. We need to ask not only how colour works, but what colour can do - how it can shape more attentive, inclusive, and meaningful futures.

The workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, co-organised by the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.) and ICA Belgium, takes this approach as a starting point. Rather than applying historical lessons unchanged, it invites participants to test Albers’ ideas in spatial situations - through observation, comparison, and experimentation.

- Lina Schmidt is a designer and co-founder of FARBKULTUR.DESIGN, specialising in colour concepts for graphics, interiors, and products. She integrates cultural research into the application of colour and serves as a colour designer and trainer for the RAL Academy. She is the Treasurer of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

Albers in Depth: From Homage to the Square to the Cube

By Juan Serra Lluch

This hands-on workshop focuses on the transformation of Homages to the Square into homages to the cube, with alternative spatial solutions that refer to the same original. Participants bridge the gap between simulated depth and physical depth, experiencing firsthand how colour interactions evolve when liberated into three-dimensional space… continue reading

Between testing-machine and a wonder-box: Experimenting colour-concepts by means of models

By Maria Zurbuchen-Henz

The workshop focuses on the eminently architectural question of the relationship between volume, space and colour. In order to approach this question in a playful way, the participants will work on cardboard models, testing polychromy of interior rooms, comparing painterly and architectural design principles. They will experiment with colour and light effects and explore architectural colour palettes and strategies… continue reading

This is a rare opportunity to engage deeply with colour, exchange ideas with leading experts, and gain new perspectives at a unique setting of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat.

Full details and programme:

Registration

Open Call: The Albers Accessibility Awards

Extended Deadline: 10 May 2026

Are you a student or PhD researcher passionate about the power of colour in space? We are offering 4 subsidised placements for our upcoming intensive workshop at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop, Germany!

Thanks to the generous support of The Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, selected students will pay a reduced fee of just €40 (Standard fee: €350).

For more information on how to apply check here.

Colour Exhibitions on our radar

A red that sings. Masterpieces by Ensor, Wouters and Schmalzigaug

11 April – 30 August 2026: Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), Belgium

James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug are known as Belgium’s Big Three modern colourists for good reason. These are artists of repute who each in their own way sought to transcend the mild colour palette of the Impressionists. For them, the power of innovative design lay precisely in the play and resonance of rich pigments. Schmalzigaug, for example, wondered what had become of Rubens’ ‘red that sings’ in modern art and cherished the ambition of becoming a master of spectacular colours himself.

The fact that the KMSKA houses the largest collection of Ensor, Wouters and Schmalzigaug provides an excellent starting point for a striking exhibition. A red that sings explores the vermilion reds, intense blues and bright yellows of the three modern masters, as well as the origins and role of their vivid visual language. Visitors can expect an original presentation of the collection, supplemented by some exceptional loans by the three protagonists. In addition to these masterpieces, the exhibition also features works by Rubens, De Braekeleer, Monticelli and Willem Paerels.

More information and tickets: https://kmska.be/en/a-red-that-sings-masterpieces-by-ensor-wouters-and-schmalzigaug

Germaine Rimbout: Poetry. Color. Movement.

20 May 2026 - 18 October 2026: The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium brings to light a figure who long remained in the shadows: Germaine Rimbout (1894–1973), a Brussels-based artist with a singular trajectory.

Influenced by Cubism and Fauvism, her work evolved after the Second World War toward a freer abstraction and an increasingly daring colour palette. An exhibition driven as much by the strength of the work as by the personality of the artist. As a female creator in a world still largely dominated by men at the time, she succeeded in forging her own path. Her artistic journey reflects the tensions and aspirations of an era.

More information and tickets: https://fine-arts-museum.be/en/exhibitions/germaine-rimbout-poetry-color-movement

Colour Circle Book Club

At ICA-Belgium we believe that colour becomes richer when we explore it collectively. The Colour Circle - ICA-Belgium’s Colour Book Club - is a space where you can discover inspiring books on colour, exchange insights, and reflect on how colour shapes our work, our thinking, and our daily lives.

1st meeting will take place on 31 May.

*for ICA-Belgium members and paid subscribers (monthly or yearly) - with hybrid attendance, (online & in person in Belgium).

Find more information about the Colour Circle Book Club here.

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

Interaction of Color by Josef Albers was a relatively late discovery for me. My artistic education was shaped primarily by The Art of Color by Johannes Itten. In this work, Itten combines theoretical reflections with visual demonstrations that explore colour interaction through his theory of the Seven Colour Contrasts. Yet the approaches of these two artists and colour theorists differ in important ways. Itten’s colour theory is a structured system explaining how colours are organized, how they contrast and harmonize, and how they can produce expressive and psychological effects in art. His ideas reflect the early twentieth-century belief that visual language could reveal deeper psychological or universal truths.

Neither Itten nor Albers sought to express personal emotion in the gestural sense associated with the artists of Abstract Expressionism. Their emphasis, however, differs. Itten combined perceptual study with expressive interpretation, whereas Albers concentrated almost entirely on perception itself. He was fascinated by the relativity and instability of colour, arguing that colour is fundamentally deceptive: it is almost never perceived as it physically is, but always in relation to its surroundings. In this sense, Albers’ work can be interpreted as a critique of Bauhaus colour theories associated with Itten and Wassily Kandinsky. Rather than proposing universal symbolic meanings, Albers emphasized experimental observation. For him, meaning emerges solely from context, from perceptual relationships.

While Albers successfully dismantled what he saw as the rigid or mystical aspects of earlier colour systems, his focus on contextual relativity may obscure another dimension of colour perception. Contemporary neuroscience suggests that human perception is not entirely neutral. Evolutionary biology appears to have shaped certain physical and emotional responses to particular wavelengths. From this perspective, some of Itten’s ideas, often dismissed as dogmatic or mystical, may instead reflect intuitive observations of underlying biological tendencies. A more complete understanding of colour may therefore lie in bridging these perspectives: acknowledging Albers’ insight that context profoundly alters perception, while also recognizing that biology provides a foundational emotional framework. Otherwise, the postmodern rejection of universals risks discarding genuine biological patterns along with outdated theoretical assumptions.

Albers’ major contribution lies above all in his pedagogy. He repeatedly emphasized that colour cannot truly be understood through description alone; it must be tested through observation and experiment. In this sense, his teaching remains remarkably relevant today. The workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, organized by ICA Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum and inspired by Interaction of Color, offers an opportunity to revisit these questions through practice. By working with colour in spatial and perceptual exercises, participants can experience firsthand the shifting relationships that fascinated Albers, while also considering how recent insights from neuroscience and biological psychology suggest that our perception of colour is shaped not only by context but also by deeper physiological and evolutionary responses.

-Inez Michiels read Colour and Semantic Design at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels and has been an internationally visiting professor at universities and colleges, including MICA (Baltimore), LASALLE (Signapore), and the University of Antwerp. Her research on nonverbal communication has guided design agencies and companies. She is the author of Symbol Constructions and The Design Semantics Knowledge Graph. She is also co-founder and serves as the secretary general of the Interdisciplinary Colour Association Belgium (ICA-Belgium).

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

“In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is – as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.” – Interaction of Color, Josef Albers

With this observation, Albers points to something fundamental: colour is never isolated. It emerges through relationships and is shaped by contrast, surroundings, light, material, proportion, and spatial context. To work with colour therefore means developing sensitivity not to colour as a fixed entity, but to colour as a living and active perception.

A central aspect of Albers’ teaching is that practice precedes theory. Colour cannot be fully understood through concepts alone; it must be experienced, tested, and compared through observation. Insight grows from experience, and evaluation from comparison. In this sense, colour is not simply knowledge to be acquired, but a perceptual discipline that must be trained. Eye and brain must learn to observe carefully to assess the complexity of colour experience.

This emphasis on observation and experience remains essential for designers. Colours shift when light, neighbouring hues, surfaces, or scale change. Colour decisions therefore require time and an iterative process of observing, experimenting, and re-evaluating. Analytical skill in colour does not arise from rules, but from repeated practice. Colour should involve flexible imagination, invention, and the ability to think in situations rather than formulas. This is where his work still feels radical as he resists the idea that colour can be reduced to recipes, harmonies, or universal systems. Instead, he invites us to search for unexpected relationships, fostering innovation, analytical comparison and fantasy.

At the same time, I would like to add colour practice should not be guided by personal taste alone. It must remain attentive to those who inhabit the spaces, objects, and atmospheres we create. Colour perception is not only an optical event; it is also social, emotional, spatial, and cultural. It extends into lived space and becomes part of how we orient ourselves, of how we feel, and of how we relate to the world. Albers asked us to replace retrospection with introspection. That remains a powerful invitation. But today, perhaps this is not enough. Alongside introspection, we also need projection: a way of looking forward. We need to ask not only how colour works, but what colour can do - how it can shape more attentive, inclusive, and meaningful futures.

The workshop Interaction of Colour in Space, co-organised by the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.) and ICA Belgium, takes this approach as a starting point. Rather than applying historical lessons unchanged, it invites participants to test Albers’ ideas in spatial situations - through observation, comparison, and experimentation.

- Lina Schmidt is a designer and co-founder of FARBKULTUR.DESIGN, specialising in colour concepts for graphics, interiors, and products. She integrates cultural research into the application of colour and serves as a colour designer and trainer for the RAL Academy. She is the Treasurer of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

For more information about the upcoming workshop, see:

We invite you to read another article from the Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, this time by Julia Hausmann.

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Collection of Essays on Albers

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

Hommage to Josef Albers

By Julia Hausmann

“We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.” – Josef Albers

Hardly any other artist has combined colour, art, space and craftsmanship as consistently as Josef Albers. His works remain highly relevant to this day – not only in art itself, but also in teaching. The holistic design principles of the Bauhaus had a lasting influence on both him and his wife, Anni Albers. At the same time, both further developed these principles and exerted a decisive influence on them through their own work and teaching. I find the poetry that is evident in both their works particularly moving.

The pictures from the series Homage to the Square show colour in its effect and at the same time as a material – the surface structure and the colour surfaces have enormous depth. The works allow us to experience how colours interact with each other, change, have a spatial effect and create emotional resonance. Unfortunately, the fascination and subtlety of these works is often flattened and simplified by the multitude of reproductions. That is precisely why it is so special to experience Albers’ works in their original form.

We, at the German Colour Association, are therefore all the more delighted to be able to hold a two-day international workshop entitled Interaction of Colour in Space at the Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop in collaboration with ICA Belgium. This will provide an opportunity to experience the added value of the originals first-hand and to explore Albers’ thoughts on the effect of colour in his birthplace.

What’s more, the museum itself is a special place that I always enjoy visiting: the ensemble of the museum, built in the 1970s, whose square floor plans refer to Homage to the Square, and the extension completed in 2022 by Swiss architects Gigon Guyer, together with the surrounding park, form a remarkable architectural and landscape feature. A small oasis in the Ruhr area, it provides a particularly inspiring setting for the practical workshop on colour.

- Julia Hausmann is an architect, speaker, lecturer at the University of Wuppertal and founder of FARBARCHITEKTUR. She serves as the Vice-President of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

We invite you to a special 2-day workshop, organised in collaboration with Deutsches Farbenzentrum and with the support of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation.

Led by two internationally acclaimed experts, the workshop brings together outstanding voices in architectural colour research and practice: Maria Zurbuchen-Henz and Juan Serra Lluch.

Through hands-on exercises, critical discussion, and applied research, both lecturers offer their distinct interpretations - translating colour theory into spatial experience, material expression, and design strategy.

This is a rare opportunity to engage deeply with colour, exchange ideas with leading experts, and gain new perspectives at a unique setting of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, where art, theory, and architecture meet. Expand your practice in the very halls where Albers’ legacy lives.

Full details and programme:

Registration

Members’ News

Nanna van Heest

Welcoming our new team member

Elisabetta Borriello will be helping us with social media in the coming months. Elisabetta, we are very happy to have you on our team, welcome!

Hello,

I’m Elisabetta, a multidisciplinary designer currently based in Austria, working across graphic, textile and surface practices, and lecturing in design.

My practice moves between digital and analogue, driven by curiosity for materials, tools, and the search for the right balance in each project’s outcome. I’m particularly fascinated by the language of colour and how its meaning and perception shift across contexts.

I’m very happy to be supporting ICA Belgium with communication and visual content, and would love to connect with the wider community.

Here you can follow some of my work and ongoing explorations:

Website / Instagram

Open Call: The Albers Accessibility Awards

Deadline: 1 May 2026

For more information on how to apply check here.

Colour Exhibitions on our radar

Joan Semmel: Continuities

22 April - 27 June 2026: Xavier Hufkens, Rivoli, Brussels

April 17 - May 30, 2026: Alexander Gray, New York

Continuities is an exhibition of recent paintings by Joan Semmel (b. 1932), presented by Xavier Hufkens (Brussels) and Alexander Gray Associates (New York). Conceived with the artist as a single presentation across Brussels and New York, the exhibition’s structure mirrors the paintings’ own logic, playing with doubling and immediacy to extend the act of seeing across continents.

Semmel paints her own body as an authored image - internalised rather than observed. In her nineties, that act carries weight. While the aging female form is routinely edited from view, these canvases place it squarely at the centre, without apology or disguise.

These paintings draw on strategies that have long shaped Semmel’s work - the cropping and emotive colour of her 1970s canvases and the multiple figures of her Overlays (1992–1996) and Shifting Image compositions (2006–2013). In works such as Partners (2024) and Fleshed Out (2025), layering allows more than one version of the figure to remain visible, as if the body echoes across the surface. In others, colour and paint handling create that sense of movement without doubling the form outright.

More information:

https://www.xavierhufkens.com/exhibitions/joan-semmel-2

https://www.alexandergray.com/exhibitions/891-joan-semmel-continuities/

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

Hello,

I’m Elisabetta, a multidisciplinary designer currently based in Austria, working across graphic, textile and surface practices, and lecturing in design.

My practice moves between digital and analogue, driven by curiosity for materials, tools, and the search for the right balance in each project’s outcome. I’m particularly fascinated by the language of colour and how its meaning and perception shift across contexts.

I’m very happy to be supporting ICA Belgium with communication and visual content, and would love to connect with the wider community.

Here you can follow some of my work and ongoing explorations:

Website / Instagram

ICA-Belgium is a community of colour lovers that share a common interest in colour, spanning the fields of art, design, architecture, science, industry, education, linguistics, philosophy, history… Join us and get to know other colour professionals and enthusiasts from all around the world (yes, we have international membership!), share about your work, develop opportunities for collaboration, build connections and contribute to a dynamic colour platform. Become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber.

Subscribe now

Over the past few weeks, I have been working hard on a new website. A website that showcases the work I have created over the last few years, since my Master’s research. A portfolio full of colour, research, murals, exhibitions, and a series of works that are for sale.

I am an artist and colour researcher working and living in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Colour takes centre stage in my work as a carrier of personal memories and sensory experiences. From an artistic and research-based approach, I develop colour studies in which the subjective experience of colour is explored and made visible.

My work grows out of observation, slowness, and attention - using colour as a way to perceive more intensely and to come closer to the present moment. Through abstract colour fields, I document and preserve combinations in which colours emerge or can be (re)organised.

To understand the phenomenon of colour and to train my eye, I often work in series. Through systematic colour studies, I explore both the optical effects and the experiential qualities of colour.

These series are realised across different media, including drawings, paintings, murals, textile installations, and screen prints. Alongside my autonomous work and commissioned colour consultancy, I develop interactive workshops that invite participants to discover and deepen their own experiences of colour.

My fascination with colour comes from an insatiable curiosity - how colour constantly shifts depending on context, perception, and personal association. I’m intrigued by how two people can see the same colour yet experience it entirely differently. The tension between the shared and the personal. Conceptually, I understand colour as a relational phenomenon rather than a fixed entity. I’m interested in colour as something unstable and subjective-something that resists absolute definition and instead reveals itself through context: next to another colour, within a space, through memory, language, or emotion.

nannavanheest.com

“We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.” – Josef Albers

Hardly any other artist has combined colour, art, space and craftsmanship as consistently as Josef Albers. His works remain highly relevant to this day – not only in art itself, but also in teaching. The holistic design principles of the Bauhaus had a lasting influence on both him and his wife, Anni Albers. At the same time, both further developed these principles and exerted a decisive influence on them through their own work and teaching. I find the poetry that is evident in both their works particularly moving.

The pictures from the series Homage to the Square show colour in its effect and at the same time as a material – the surface structure and the colour surfaces have enormous depth. The works allow us to experience how colours interact with each other, change, have a spatial effect and create emotional resonance. Unfortunately, the fascination and subtlety of these works is often flattened and simplified by the multitude of reproductions. That is precisely why it is so special to experience Albers’ works in their original form.

We, at the German Colour Association, are therefore all the more delighted to be able to hold a two-day international workshop entitled Interaction of Colour in Space at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop in collaboration with ICA-Belgium. This will provide an opportunity to experience the added value of the originals first-hand and to explore Albers’ thoughts on the effect of colour in his birthplace.

What’s more, the museum itself is a special place that I always enjoy visiting: the ensemble of the museum, built in the 1970s, whose square floor plans refer to Homage to the Square, and the extension completed in 2022 by Swiss architects Gigon Guyer, together with the surrounding park, form a remarkable architectural and landscape feature. A small oasis in the Ruhr area, it provides a particularly inspiring setting for the practical workshop on colour.

- Julia Hausmann is an architect, speaker, lecturer at the University of Wuppertal and founder of FARBARCHITEKTUR. She serves as the Vice-President of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

For more information about the upcoming workshop, see:

Celebrating the International Colour Day (21st of March), we dedicated a Collection of Essays to Josef Albers. Today we bring you the first of them, written by Timo Rieke.

We present you an Open Call for the Albers Accessibility Awards, and invite you to register for the international workshop Interaction of Colour in Space.

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Collection of Essays on Albers

We are introducing a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work. The essays will be published in the coming weeks on ICA-Belgium website.

Hommage to Josef Albers

by Timo Rieke

Josef and Annie Albers never cease to amaze me. Their enduring relevance lies in a fundamental insight: that colour cannot be applied as a formula, but always enters into relationships.

For Josef Albers, colour is not a thing, not a substance, not a measurable stimulus. It is an event – and events require conditions. Colour emerges in relation: to the colours that surround it, to the light that falls upon it, to the material that carries it, to the space in which it appears, and not least to the eye and experience of the beholder. Anyone who opens Interaction of Color finds no system that guarantees results – but an invitation to test these conditions themselves. For Albers, knowledge about colour is always also self-knowledge: I do not see what is there. I see how I see.

This sets him fundamentally apart from theorists like Itten or Küppers, whose systems carry an implicit promise: master the rules and you master colour. Heinz von Foerster would have called that a trivial machine – same input, same output. Albers builds a non-trivial machine. His exercises produce answers that have already shifted by the time you look at them. This is not a weakness – it is the most honest description of how colour actually works. And perhaps the reason his work does not age: whoever offers no formula cannot be superseded.

No wonder that Luis Barragán – to whom both were personally close – hung a reproduction of Homage to the Square on the north wall of his living room. Some affinities need no explanation.

Albers devoted himself to a single theme with a consistency that has few parallels in art history. From that persistence, iconicity emerged – and a foundation that holds. Artists such as Donald Judd, Sheila Hicks, Ruth Asawa and Cy Twombly carried his thinking in entirely different directions, without exhausting it.

At this year’s Albers Workshop of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.) and ICA Belgium, we want to experience precisely that: what it means not to possess colour – but to enter into a relationship with it.

- Timo Rieke is a designer, researcher and professor for colour and surface design at the HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim. He serves as the president of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

Registration for Interaction of Colour in Space is now open

We invite you to a special 2-day workshop, organised in collaboration with Deutsches Farbenzentrum and with the support of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation.

Led by two internationally acclaimed experts, the workshop brings together outstanding voices in architectural colour research and practice: Maria Zurbuchen-Henz and Juan Serra Lluch.

Through hands-on exercises, critical discussion, and applied research, both lecturers offer their distinct interpretations - translating colour theory into spatial experience, material expression, and design strategy.

This is a rare opportunity to engage deeply with colour, exchange ideas with leading experts, and gain new perspectives at a unique setting of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, where art, theory, and architecture meet. Expand your practice in the very halls where Albers’ legacy lives.

Where: Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, Bottrop, Germany

When: June 27–28, 2026

Who: Architects, designers, artists and all colour lovers

Full details and program:

Price

• Member registration (Deutsches Farbenzentrum and ICA Belgium):

  290,00 €

• Normal registration:

  350,00 €

• 4 subsidised student places (see the Open Call bellow):

  40,00 €

Places are limited to 25.

Registration

Open Call: The Albers Accessibility Awards

ICA-Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum, thanks to the generous support of the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, are pleased to announce four subsidised placements for our upcoming intensive workshop, Interaction of Colour in Space, taking place at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, in Bottrop, Germany, June 27–28, 2026.

The Awards

To support the next generation of creative talent and promote the accessibility of high-level colour education, we are offering 4 subsidised spots to full-time students in higher education (including PhD candidates).

Successful applicants will receive a significant reduction in tuition:

• Subsidised Student Fee: €40 * (Standard Participant Fee: €350)

*Please note that this subsidy doesn’t cover travel, accommodation, and meals.

To apply for an Albers Accessibility Award, please submit the following via email to ica@ica-belgium.org:

1. Proof of Enrollment: A clear copy of your valid student card or an official proof of enrollment for the current academic year.

2. Motivation Statement (Max. 250 words, in English): A short text explaining

   • Why you wish to participate in the Interaction of Colour in Space workshop at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat.

   • How would this workshop impact your current studies, research, personal interest, and/or future career goals.

Email Subject Line: Albers Accessibility Award Application - [Your Full Name]

Key Dates

• Application Deadline: May 1st, 2026 (end of day, CEST)

• Notification of Results: Successful applicants will be notified by email no later than May 15th, 2026.

We look forward to reading your applications and welcoming a dynamic group of students to Bottrop this June!

ICA-Belgium members and yearly subscribers - send us your colour related news! We are happy to share about your colour-related work in the newsletter and our website.

ICA-Belgium is a community of colour lovers that share a common interest in colour, spanning the fields of art, design, architecture, science, industry, education, linguistics, philosophy, history…

Join us and get to know other colour professionals and enthusiasts from all around the world (yes, we have international membership!), share about your work, develop opportunities for collaboration, build connections and contribute to a dynamic colour platform.

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

Josef and Annie Albers never cease to amaze me. Their enduring relevance lies in a fundamental insight: that colour cannot be applied as a formula, but always enters into relationships.

For Josef Albers, colour is not a thing, not a substance, not a measurable stimulus. It is an event – and events require conditions. Colour emerges in relation: to the colours that surround it, to the light that falls upon it, to the material that carries it, to the space in which it appears, and not least to the eye and experience of the beholder. Anyone who opens Interaction of Color finds no system that guarantees results – but an invitation to test these conditions themselves. For Albers, knowledge about colour is always also self-knowledge: I do not see what is there. I see how I see.

This sets him fundamentally apart from theorists like Itten or Küppers, whose systems carry an implicit promise: master the rules and you master colour. Heinz von Foerster would have called that a trivial machine – same input, same output. Albers builds a non-trivial machine. His exercises produce answers that have already shifted by the time you look at them. This is not a weakness – it is the most honest description of how colour actually works. And perhaps the reason his work does not age: whoever offers no formula cannot be superseded.

No wonder that Luis Barragán – to whom both were personally close – hung a reproduction of Homage to the Square on the north wall of his living room. Some affinities need no explanation.

Albers devoted himself to a single theme with a consistency that has few parallels in art history. From that persistence, iconicity emerged – and a foundation that holds. Artists such as Donald Judd, Sheila Hicks, Ruth Asawa and Cy Twombly carried his thinking in entirely different directions, without exhausting it.

At this year’s Albers Workshop of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.) and ICA Belgium, we want to experience precisely that: what it means not to possess colour – but to enter into a relationship with it.

- Timo Rieke is a designer, researcher and professor for colour and surface design at the HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim. He serves as the president of the German Colour Association (Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.).

This essay is part of a Collection of Essays dedicated to Josef Albers, where the organisers of the workshop Interaction of Colour in Space share their thoughts about Josef Albers and his impact on their work.

ICA-Belgium and the Deutsches Farbenzentrum (German Colour Association), with the generous support of the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, are pleased to announce four subsidised placements for our upcoming intensive workshop, Interaction of Colour in Space, taking place at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, in Bottrop, Germany, June 27–28, 2026.

The Awards

To support the next generation of creative talent and promote the accessibility of high-level colour education, we are offering 4 subsidised spots to full-time students in higher education (including PhD candidates).

Successful applicants will receive a significant reduction in tuition:

• Subsidised Student Fee: €40 * (Standard Participant Fee: €350)

*Please note that this subsidy doesn’t cover travel, accommodation, and meals.

How to Apply

To apply for an Albers Accessibility Award, please submit the following via email to ica@ica-belgium.org:

1. Proof of Enrollment: A clear copy of your valid student card or an official proof of enrollment for the current academic year.

2. Motivation Statement (Max. 250 words, in English): A short text explaining:

   • Why you wish to participate in the Interaction of Colour in Space workshop at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat.

   • How this experience would contribute to your current studies, research, personal interest, and/or future career goals.

Email Subject Line: Albers Accessibility Award Application - [Your Full Name]

Workshop Details

For the full program, lecturer biographies, and more information about the workshop, please visit:

We look forward to reading your applications and welcoming a dynamic group of students to Bottrop this June!

More about:

Anni and Josef Albers Foundation: albersfoundation.org

Deutsches Farbenzentrum (DFZ): deutsches-farbenzentrum.de

Interdisciplinary Colour Association (ICA-Belgium): ica-belgium.org

Explore the 10th Photo Brussels Festival with Vinciane Lacroix and discover exhibitions rich in colour. In case you missed our Colour Talk with Juan Serra Lluch, the recording is now available.

Warm greetings from Belgium,

-your ICA-Belgium team

Recording of the Colour Talk with Juan Serra Lluch

If you missed our Colour Talk on the 8th of February 2026, the recording is now available.

Juan Serra Lluch, architect, researcher and professor at the School of Architecture of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), spoke about his book, Color for Architects.

If you’d like to read the book, there are English and French versions available.

You can buy the English book here:

Neue Galerie / Standaard Boekhandel / Biblio / Architectura & Natura

French version, published by Le Moniteur: Utiliser la couleur dans un projet d’architecture, can be bought here:

Libris.nl / Athenaeum Scheltema / Filigranes / Le Moniteur

*ICA-Belgium is an affiliate of Routledge, Libris and Atheneum Scheltema. We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through these links, at no cost to you, which helps support our mission.

Colour Circle Book Club

The first Colour Circle Book Club Meeting will take place on 3 May 2026, with hybrid attendance. The exact time and place will be communicated to members and paid subscribers. Join us in reading Color for Architects by Juan Serra Lluch.

Find out more about the Colour Circle Book Club:

Colour Exhibitions on our radar

Light as a heritage. Church glass windows in Flanders after 1945

12 January - 29 March 2026, KADOC-KU Leuven

The exhibition Light as Heritage focuses on the distinctive character of church stained glass after the Second World War. It explores the revival and development of stained-glass art, presents glass artists whose archives are preserved at KADOC and who were active after 1945, and concludes with an in-depth look at three case studies:
the Church of Saint Hubert in Berchem, featuring work by Joris Van de Broek;
the Church of Our Lady in Kortrijk, with the stained-glass ensemble by Michel Martens; and the parish church of Salvator Mundi in the Hamont district of Lo, with stained-glass windows by Bert Vonk.

Curated by Zsuzsanna Böröcz.

More information

La Bataille des couleurs (The Battle of the Colours)

13 February – 17 August 2026, Maison Pompidou, Paris

Before adopting its iconic pop colours, the Centre Pompidou almost ended up gold and blue, brown, or even… entirely yellow! In the 1970s, during its construction, the chromatic palette of the building designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (with Gianfranco Franchini and engineers Ove Arup & Partners) was the subject of extraordinary controversy. A true Battle of the Colors is now retraced in an eponymous inaugural exhibition at the Maison Pompidou.

Red for the movement of goods and visitors, blue for air conditioning, green for water, yellow for electricity... each flow network was assigned a colour. While these colours are iconic today, they actually emerged from a succession of events and disputes between 1971 and 1977, during which President Georges Pompidou, the architects, museum curators, and several artists repeatedly composed and recomposed the building’s palette.

Testimonies, drawings, photographs, previously unseen documents, and a materials library shed light on the turbulent origins of this palette. Colour appears here as a central issue - the object of passionate debate and conflict. The exhibition is organised into two sections: a first room dedicated to discovering the chromatic history of the building, and a second room presenting a collection of everyday objects (tables, lighting, buckets, cables, etc.) that demonstrate how the architects applied this palette down to the smallest details of design and interior layout.

More information

New Online Course: CMS Colour Fundamentals

By Nick Harkness

This new CMS set of Interactive colour exercises explores the core aspects of colour terminology. They enhance visual colour, communication and understanding of lightness, chroma, hue and appearance in just 10 practical tasks.

What’s included

Primary Colours / Art Colour Circle / CIE Colour Circle / NCS Colour Circle / Lightness / Hering Triangle / Chroma & Hue / Colour Difference / Colour Difference (Advanced) / After Image

Price: AUD 38

Enroll for CMS Colour Fundamentals

Colour Made Simple is ideal for:

• Large, medium sized, small organisations and Individuals. It enables good colour understanding and the ability to communicate colour issues within a range of departments e.g. Design, Marketing, Production, R &D plus Sales.

• Speaking the same colour language and using the same terminology is critical for product development, creative projects, IP and brand management when colour issues occur.

• New comers to an organisation. CMS represents a fast track into the world of colour measurement for a wide range applications.

• Universities looking to augment course material or university students seeking to deepen their knowledge on this subject over a wide range of academic disciplines

• People with a passion for colour

Find other courses from CMS here

Special offer! 25% discount for ICAB members

Find more information below:

As a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and on a very limited budget, we are counting on you to help us continue offering free online Colour Talks, colour related information and accessible colour related events and education. Consider to either become an ICA-Belgium member, or a paid newsletter subscriber. You can also buy ICA a coffee.

This new CMS set of Interactive colour exercises explore the core aspects of colour terminology. They enhance visual colour, communication and understanding of lightness, chroma, hue and appearance in just 10 practical tasks.

What’s included

• Primary Colours

• Art Colour Circle

• CIE Colour Circle

• NCS Colour Circle

• Lightness

• Hering Triangle

• Chroma & Hue

• Colour Difference

• Colour Difference (Advanced)

• After Image

Price: $38

Enroll for CMS Colour Fundamentals

Colour Made Simple is ideal for:

• Large, medium sized, small organisations and Individuals. It enables good colour understanding and the ability to communicate colour issues within a range of departments e.g. Design, Marketing, Production, R &D plus Sales.

• Speaking the same colour language and using the same terminology is critical for product development, creative projects, IP and brand management when colour issues occur.

• New comers to an organisation. CMS represents a fast track into the world of colour measurement for a wide range applications.

• Universities looking to augment course material or university students seeking to deepen their knowledge on this subject over a wide range of academic disciplines

• People with a passion for colour

Find other courses from CMS here

This article, which proposes a color-centered approach to recent exhibitions, is the fourth in a series commissioned by the ICA-Belgium. Before moving on to the follow-up of the article Parisian Colors, here’s a little interlude to enjoy the European Month of Photography, especially in Brussels.

So, I’ve selected three photographers featured in the 10th Photo Brussels Festival:

• Jean-Bernard Métais, La Couleur du temps, at Galerie La Forest Divonne (8 January – 22 February 2026)

• Pixy Liao, People in Mirror are closer than they appear, Galerie Stieglitz19 (15 January – 21 February 2026)

• Jesse Willems, LUZ, Schönfeld Gallery (11 January – 28 February)

The Color of Time

The Color of Time, or the iris of wine? If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, do Jean-Bernard Métais’s photos give us access to the soul of wine?

Jean-Bernard Métais is both a winemaker and an artist. For 50 years, he has been photographing the vats of his wine, capturing its evolution at different stages of maturation. If he doesn’t (yet) endow this beverage with a soul, he nonetheless considers it a being in its own right. Indeed, since 1989, his photos have been archived under the title “The Births of the Wine Being.”

And for color lovers, this series presented at Galerie La Forest Divonne is a delight. Yet the artist claims no aesthetic agenda - only the poetry of the living.

The three selected photos particularly draw me in through the quality of their contrasts, the richness of their tones, and the subtle variety within formal simplicity.

A personal selection

The first one offers a very light blue background at the center of the vat, gradually enriched with sparkles of a deeper blue. Mauve ramifications emerge from the heart, darkening and densifying toward the periphery until they intertwine with the coppery dendrites at the edges, progressively compartmentalizing the organic form. The copper-mauve harmony within a range of blues is particularly successful.

Imagine the photo rotated 90° and cropped as a rectangle: the magic of the iris vanishes, revealing a naive tree against a sky. The rigorous choice of a disk inscribed in a uniform square precisely neutralizes any figurative anecdote, any scale reference, and ensures the series’ coherence.

Built on the same principle, the second places greater emphasis on the coppery edge of the vat. It becomes a flamboyant setting for a light violet heart. The smooth, minimally nuanced center cracks at the periphery like sun-baked dried earth. A Bordeaux red traces the fissures and draws symmetrical wings on the right lateral structure, adding texture and variety. An oblong black point, placed on this axis of symmetry, punctuates the image and breaks its predictability.

The last work remains enigmatic: reflections suggesting a golden sphere, immediately contradicted by the pink-edged liquid at the bottom; a lighter film floats there and marbles the surface. Three dark squares discreetly structure the whole, bathed in warm tones - light pink, golden yellow-orange, clay browns up to deep brown. It’s simply beautiful.

One downside: on large enlargements, JPEG compression artifacts alter the finesse of the organic textures, which are essential to this visual poetry.

People in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

A smile instantly lights up the visitor’s face as they push open the door of this small gallery on rue Saint-Georges. Is it the intimacy of the space or the immediate warmth with which Pixy Liao (@bloodypixy) welcomes you? According to her, if her work makes you smile, you’ve grasped its essence.

The exhibition notice - “these performative self-portraits, sometimes risqué, overturn traditional gender hierarchies” - places the artist firmly in the zeitgeist, but that’s not what draws me in. What touches me is the offbeat humor, the Wes Anderson-like colorful universe, the assumed vintage feel, and above all this complicit invitation the artist extends to the viewer, welcomed into her intimate theater.

Three photos

The first one unsettles me: Pixy behind a large hexagonal flask, as if offering her head in a jar. The unease perhaps comes from the partial duplication of the face on either side, crossed by a central shadow. I love the vertical jade reflection to the left of the face, a chromatic echo of a window likely out of frame. The coppery tone of the body elsewhere makes a beautiful chromatic transition with Jean-Bernard Métais’s work seen earlier.

The second instantly evokes Wes Anderson: centered composition, restricted pastel palette, surprise and invention. The model’s simultaneously provocative and chaste pose in front of her fake-voyeur companion is amusing. Well done Pixy! - including this photo in the festival program, you hooked me! I love these thermal bath atmospheres; we find them again in another photograph where bright yellow basins serve as a counterpoint to a huge painted mountain backdrop. Martin Parr is not far away.

The third surprises again: a couple - seen from behind - dazzled by an invisible spectacle, sharing a complicit wonder. Deliberate overexposure, cheesy pose… We slip into a world of idyllic love; everything is staged, we’re not fooled, and yet it works.

LUZ

Jesse Willems’s work is not explicitly mentioned in the 10th Brussels Photo Festival program, even though Schönfeld Gallery is listed.

No matter - I take the liberty of talking about it here. These abstract photographs may puzzle fans of more traditional photography, though this kind of approach is far from new. One can sense a certain kinship with Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas, or Franco Fontana, with that same taste for composition and color.

Three abstract compositions

The first composition grabs attention: where does reality end and the artist’s intervention begin? The black shapes, likely shadows on a light granulated floor, offer a very graphic contrast. A pale orange T, slightly tilted, structures and divides the image unevenly. Two smaller shapes of the same color echo each other on either side, balancing the whole. The top and bottom dialogue: a large, slightly blurred bluish-gray triangle counterbalances a more mineral, sharper elongated shape in the same hue. The inversion of black/white contrasts at the right edge further energizes the composition. The bluish-gray / pale orange contrast against black and white signs is particularly seductive. One senses the photographer’s delight in the colour that emerges from everyday life.

The second composition, immediately very different, is all curves and roundness. The shapes extend onto the frame, changing color as they do. At the top left, a vivid blue loses its intensity as it crosses the frame, as if yielding its chromatic strength to the red curve outlining its contour. On the right, a tonic orange pushes the gaze out of the frame, only to bring it back lower toward a complex ultramarine blue shape. Orange/blue, the great classic, works wonderfully here in what seems to be a maquette of cut paper illuminated, generating shadows, openings, and lights.

The third composition, magnificently simple, evokes 1950s architecture or posters: black/white contrasts in dynamic curves, and a single color - a mahogany red - that bursts out of the frame.

In each image, a border of varying width seems to separate interior from exterior, affirming the artist’s intent to suggest a potential “beyond the frame.”

In conclusion

These three photographers to whet your appetite: a photo festival is meant to be savored.

At Galerie La Forest Divonne, the hanging of La Couleur du temps is particularly well done. Games and dialogues unfold between glass sculptures and Jean-Bernard Métais’s photographs, subtly suggesting to the less-informed visitor a link to the world of winemaking.

Don’t miss the small Galerie Stieglitz19, where Pixy Liao’s fabricated universe will charm you.

The Rivoli complex, home to Galerie Schönfeld, is a must for Brussels art lovers. You can’t walk through it without encountering a work that speaks to you. Several galleries are participating in the 10th Photo Brussels. Don’t pass by Jesse Willems’s compositions, where photography becomes pure abstraction extending onto the frame.

So go explore the venues of the 10th Photo Brussels or any photographic exhibition this February!