The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

Yoga was probably far from Josef Albers’s mind when he was working on the series of color-saturated pictures he called “Homage to the Square” beginning in 1950. Yet deep meditation was built into the project, which went on for a quarter of a century, sustained by the almost reflexive focus that comes with long practice of a craft.

In Albers’s case practice really did make perfect. The hundreds of same-size paintings in the “Homage” group are about as faultless as art gets. Each is composed of three or four precisely nested squares. The color in each square is calculated to interact with and transform the colors around it. The paint surfaces look machine tooled but aren’t. They’re sensuously if minimally textured, like skin.

Albers’s overall aim was to create an impression of effortless, inevitable harmony, which, of course, demands hard work. And labor is the subject of “Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper” at the Morgan Library & Museum, a show not about finished products but about the constant hands-on research and experimentation, the hitting, missing and learning-as-you-go correcting that went into them.

Hands-on came naturally to Albers, born in Germany in 1888. One grandfather was a carpenter, another a blacksmith. His father was a joiner and wall painter who worked with stained glass. Although Albers studied painting, it was as a maker of stained glass that he joined the faculty of the He meant his own and ours.

“Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper” remains on view through Oct. 14 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, (212) 685-0008, themorgan.org.