Josef Albers became one of the most influential figures of the 20th century avant-garde. He worked in a variety of media but has become widely recognised through his later printed work, based on the exploration of colour.

In 1949 he wrote a definitive text on colour theory (which he used as a preface to this suite 'Ten Variants') and soon after began work on the series of coloured squares and rectangles which came to dominate his work and which explored the idea of colour as an illusion, depending on context. "We do not see colours as they really are" he wrote "in our perception they alter one another" Although he began his experiments in this field with paint, he came to depend on the planographic print processes, particularly screen-print, because through them consistent evenness of colour could be produced easily and with great speed.