Colour News April 2026 - No. 2
Colour related news and events
Welcome to the 2nd April edition of ICA-Belgium Colour News, bringing you colour related news from Belgium and around the world. We welcome our new team member, share the news by our members and interesting colour related exhibitions.
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:
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:
If you would like to volunteer for ICA-Belgium, please get in touch with us at ica@ica-belgium.org and let us know more about you and how you think you could contribute to ICA-Belgium. We are a nonprofit organisation, run entirely by volunteers, always looking for ways to grow, develop and connect.
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/
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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.
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Informative contents, nice lay out. In relation to Albers, I recommend the article by Andreas Schwarz, Josef Albers put into perspective, in Journal of the International Colour Association (2023): 33, 178-191 - Published online: 21 June 2023.