Colour News May 2026
Colour related news and events
Welcome to the May edition of ICA-Belgium Colour News, bringing you colour related news from Belgium and around the world.
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:
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.
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.