A Celebration of Colour, Material and Perception Homage to the Square

An exhibition celebrating Mutina’s latest porcelain collection.

This summer, we’re proud to present Homage to the Square at our Clerkenwell showroom.

Colour is never seen alone

For more than 25 years, Josef Albers returned to one deceptively simple form: a series of nested squares. Between 1950 and 1976, he created more than 1,000 works as part of Homage to the Square, using variations in colour to explore how our perception of one shade is altered by another. The geometry remained deliberately restrained; it was the relationship between colours that became the subject. A colour could appear brighter, deeper, warmer or cooler simply because of what was placed beside it.

“Colour changes according to what surrounds it.” - Josef Albers

From colour study to material

Developed by Mutina in collaboration with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, the collection takes Albers’ investigation beyond the canvas and into an architectural material. Rather than reproducing his paintings, it works with the principles behind them.

Seven colours are interpreted across two porcelain formats, Dot and Dash, creating a modular system that can be repeated, contrasted and recombined. Layered glazes move between matt and glossy finishes, introducing subtle variations in tone and reflectivity. Placed together, the tiles begin to behave much like Albers’ colours: each combination changes the perception of the next.

One colour is many colours

Albers believed that colour was among the most relative mediums in art. There was no single, fixed reading of a colour; its appearance depended on context.

That idea becomes particularly interesting when translated into architecture. Across a larger surface, repetition creates rhythm. Contrasting tones sharpen one another. Closely related shades can appear to merge. Gloss catches light while matt surfaces absorb it.

The result is less about choosing an individual colour and more about what happens between colours.

“In visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is.” - Josef Albers

View the Range

The Exhibition

At Domus Clerkenwell, Homage to the Square is presented as a dedicated installation, allowing the collection to be experienced at an architectural scale.

The exhibition brings together colour, pattern and material, offering an opportunity to see how the palette shifts as combinations change, and to experiment with Dot and Dash as a system rather than viewing individual tiles in isolation.

It is also an invitation to look more closely. At colour. At surface. And at how surprisingly different a material can become when its surroundings change.