“Some painters turn the sun into a yellow dot, others turn a yellow dot into a sun”. (Pablo Picasso)
The colour yellow “has a slightly stimulating quality of serenity and cheerfulness”. However, it is extremely sensitive, producing an unpleasant image when dirty….. A slight, imperceptible movement is enough to make it the colour of infamy, repulsion and unease.
“Mariée en papier jaune”, 2022, Zeng Chuanxing (Chinese, b. 1974), oil on canvas, private collection
The words of Goethe, one of the greatest writers, thinkers and intellectuals of all time, author of the work Colour Theory, in which yellow becomes the only primary colour along with blue, are perfect for introducing a purely ‘chromotherapeutic’ vision of this shade.
According to this modern alternative medicine, yellow, the colour of the sun and gold, helps to restore vitality and energy, so much so that, since ancient Egypt, it has been associated with the Sun God, who represented strength and vitality. To go into more detail, in chromotherapy, yellow is considered to be a colour with very powerful effects on the psyche, as it can stimulate the intellectual part of the brain and encourage concentration.
It also represents the desire for change, which instils positivity, joy and protection. It is precisely because of these characteristics that yellow is used in supportive therapies to combat depression and apathy, as well as psychosomatic ailments.
But to return to Goethe’s words, the aforementioned colour also has a ‘dark side’, often associated with cowardice, illness and mental infirmity. However, despite these latter aspects, the predominant vision of this colour remains inextricably linked to the sensation of warmth, luminosity and, consequently, positivity.
Mona Hoel, L’entretien – matin, 2021. Tempera on wood, 50 x 50 cm.
Sabina d’Antonio, Summer sun, 2020. Acrylic, stencil, collage, fabric on canvas, 100 x 100
Jérôme Cholet, Augusta graffiti jaune, 2020. Collage, acrylic, spray paint on canvas, 40 x 30 cm.
Yayoi Kusama, installation
The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (to whom we owe the Obliteration Room) has spread an infinite number of polka dots across various rooms at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.
Her installations include In Infinity and Dots Obsession, in which visitors find themselves immersed in monochrome yellow and red rooms, surrounded by large black and white polka dots, mirrors and inflatable sculptures.
Pablo Picasso, Nude on a beach, 1929
André Derain, Collioure lighthouse, 1905, oil on canvas
Baselitz, yellow head
You have to go to London to admire this nativity from 1380 by Antonio Veneziano. I think it’s one of the simplest and most beautiful.
The softness of autumn in a painting by Paul-Élie Ranson, “Paysage japonais”, circa 1895.
Ranson was one of the five founding members of the Nabis group created in 1888, along with Paul Sérusier, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis.
He died aged just 47, and we have few works to judge his talent.
When Modigliani escapes from portraits, like this canvas “Cypresses and houses near Cagnes”, painted in 1919.
Pierre Bonnard, “L’Automne”, 1912, with a poem by Paul Verlaine
In the oppressive heat
With which we roasted the summer,
Here creeps, still slow
And shy, to be sure,
On the waters and among the leaves,
Even in your street, O Paris,
The barren street where you mourn
Such perfumes never dry up,
Pantin, Aubervilliers, prodigy
Of chemistry and its games,
Here comes the breeze, I say,
The brave breeze…
The cleansing breeze
From the morbid languours of yesteryear,
The breeze that demands
That says to the plague: go away!
And feasts on the laziness
Of the poet and the worker,
Encouraging and urging them on…
“Long live the breeze!” we must shout:
“Long live the autumn breeze!
After all these hellish simouns,
The good breeze that gives us
That healthy first shiver of winter!”
Mimosas in bloom at Cagnes, 1921, Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), private collection
“Resting” 1930 by the American painter Aleksander Oscar Levy (1881-1947)
“Raja”, 1925, by the Italian painter Felice Casorati (1883 – 1963), (oil on board – 51 x 37.5 cm), private collection Bella Hutter, Turin.
Close to the magic realism movement, Casorati was a painter, engraver, draughtsman and set designer.
His work was inspired by dreams (influenced by the Jugendstil and the linearism of Art Nouveau and the Secession) and by the figurative tradition of Classicism and the Italian Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries.
He moved to Turin in 1917, and it was from 1920 onwards that his artistic expression changed to embrace a volumetry close to that of Masaccio.
He also used delicate tonal passages derived from his study of Renaissance colourism.
The bodies became shorter and were governed by a mysterious sense of immobility.
From the 1930s onwards, he moved towards expressionism, abandoning the rigour of antiquity.
CASORATI was a very famous painter in his day, enjoying enormous success and exhibiting regularly at Venice biennales.
The young woman in the foreground is his friend, the Russian ballerina Raja Markmann.
““Croquet”, 1878, by the French painter and illustrator James Tissot (1836 – 1902), oil on canvas, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario – Canada
He spent part of his life in England, where he was appreciated as a painter of Victorian high society.
“The yellow flower”, 1908, (the artist’s wife in the garden), Robert Lewis Reid (1862-1929)
oil on canvas.
American impressionist painter, member of the “Ten American Painters”.
“Au jardin”, Robert Delaunay (1904), oil on canvas (71.8×56.4 cm), Brooklyn Museum, New-York.
Robert Delaunay was a French painter who was born on 12 April 1885 in Paris and died on 25 October 1941 in Montpellier.
Robert Delaunay’s work is generally divided chronologically into two parts: the neo-Impressionism of his youth on the one hand and, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and a few others, Orphism, a branch of Cubism and the avant-garde of abstraction, which constituted his maturity (from around 1912) on the other.
This painting belongs to the first part of his work, which was inspired by Impressionism.
“Spring Flowers” by Louis Valtat, (French painter, 1869-1952), is considered one of the most important references of post-impressionist art.
Valtat studied in Paris with Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and in 1888 with Jules Dupré at the Académie Julian, where he met the artists Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Albert André.
In 1895, he worked with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Albert André to create the sets for Lugné-Poë’s play Le Chariot de Terre Cuite. During this period, Valtat was exposed to Impressionism, Pointillism and the work of Van Gogh, and was frequently in the company of the Nabis.
In 1897, influenced by Van Gogh’s bold use of colour and expressive technique, Valtat broadened his palette to include more strident colours. Through his experiments with colour and form, the artist depicted a sunny vision of contemporary life, foreshadowing the works of the Fauves.
During his stays in the South of France, he frequently visited Paul Signac in Saint-Tropez and Auguste Renoir in Cagnes, who encouraged him in his artistic development.
Combining bright colours and broad strokes, the artist’s work illustrates the transitional period in art that followed the Impressionist movement and led to major changes in twentieth-century artistic practice.
Louis Valtat’s work can be found in numerous collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
“Interior, Port of Ischia”, 1924, Hans Purrmann (1880 – 1966).
Hans Purrmann (1880-1966) was a German painter, graphic artist, sculptor, art collector and writer.
Hans Purrmann studied at the Karlsruhe School of Fine Arts from 1897 to 1899. He continued his artistic training at the Munich Academy of Art from 1900 to 1905.
From 1906 to 1914, he lived in Paris, where he became a pupil and friend of Henri Matisse. Between 1908 and 1910, Hans Purrmann made several trips to Germany with Matisse, who made him his protégé.
Between the wars, he spent several periods in Italy (notably at the Villa Romana in Florence, which he was to direct) and France.
He also lived in Berlin and Langenargen on Lake Constance.
His work includes almost 1,400 oil paintings, 400 watercolours and numerous illustrations, as well as four sculptures.
He painted still lifes, nudes, portraits and landscapes, mainly in the sunny south of France.
Although his work is more realistic, his taste for arabesque, the use of pure colours and the ornamental arrangement of decorative elements make Purrmann a true disciple of Matisse.
“To the stars”, Elena Nicolaievna, oil on canvas
Felix Vallotton, “Les Andelys, le soir”, 1924
“Winter Lights” by Richard Savoie, painter born in 1959.
“Solitude” by Diane Leonard, American painter
“House of Light”, 1914, by Auguste Macke
Fernando Botero (Colombian, born 1932), “Dog Turning a Corner” (1980), oil on canvas (190 x 154 cm), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, United States.
Mihai Olteanu, Romanian painter born in 1962
Giorgio Morandi, “Flowers”, 1920. Totally atypical and yet unmistakably Morandi.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), “Tender Yellow”, 1927. Beautiful, isn’t it? And it tells a whole story – to each his own!
“Still life with lemon and cut glass”, Maria Margaretha van Os, 1823-1826.
Oskar Schlemmer (German, 1888 – 1943). “The Triadic Ballet, Yellow Sequence, Large Skirt” (Das Triadische Ballett, Gelbe Reihe, Grosser Rock), 1922.
Winifred Nicholson, “Kate’s Flowers” (1929-1935).
Winifred Nicholson was a colourist who developed a personal impressionist style, concentrating on domestic still life objects and landscapes. She was married to the artist Ben Nicholson.
Paul Stone, “Bagged Lemons”, 2022
“Marine jaune et mauve”,1923, Léon Spilliaert, Belgian painter
Enric Torres Prat, realist/figurative painter born in 1938 in Barcelona, Spain.
“Strong souls have much more violent feelings than others when they are tender.”
Voltaire, The Ingénu
“Dawn”, Vincent Van Gogh
I kissed the summer dawn.
Nothing was yet moving on the front of the palaces. The water was dead. The shadowy camps never left the woodland road. I walked, awakening the lively and tepid breaths, and the gems looked, and the wings rose without a sound. […]
Arthur Rimbaud
“Sunrise”, photo by Konstantin Kirgincev.
When the sun rises, another dream begins, and each day is followed by a brighter day, each dazzle by a new dazzle…
Louis Gauthier
Toni Demuro, Italian illustrator , 1974
“The Spirit of Spring”,1894, Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau
Painting by Laurent Parcelier.
After three years
Having pushed open the narrow door,
I strolled through the little garden
Softly lit by the morning sun,
Sparkling each flower with a damp glow.
Nothing had changed. I saw it all again: the humble arbour
With its crazy vines and rattan chairs…
The fountain still makes its silvery murmur
And the old tree shakes with its eternal lament.
The roses, as before, flutter; as before,
The proud lilies sway in the wind,
Every lark that comes and goes is known to me.
I have even found Velléda standing,
Whose plaster is peeling at the end of the avenue,
– Frail, amidst the bland smell of reseda.
Paul Verlaine
“Promise of Spring”, Marjorie Miller, (1899-1995), American illustrator.
Photograph by Joel Dousset (India)
Painting by Ashvin Harrison
To be free, all you have to do is be free, without asking anyone’s permission. You have to make a hypothesis about your own destiny and stick to it, without submitting or giving in to circumstances. Such freedom requires genuine inner resources, a high level of individual awareness, and a sense of responsibility to oneself and hence to others. The tragedy, alas, is that we do not know how to be free. We demand a freedom that must cost the other, but without giving up anything in exchange, seeing this as an obstacle to our individual freedoms and rights. We are all characterised today by an extraordinary selfishness. But that is not freedom. Freedom means learning to ask nothing of life or those around us, to be demanding of ourselves and generous to others. Freedom lies in sacrifice in the name of love.
Andreï Tarkovski
Watercolour by Veneta Docheva, Bulgarian painter.
Marc Chagall, “Lovers with daisies”
“Nono in a yellow dress”(1925), Henri Lebasque (1865-1937)
It’s subtle, you have to look carefully, and the Nikko pagoda appears in the mist of this 1930 print by Ito Yuhan.
Let’s keep our childlike spirit with this magnificent illustration….
Takeo Takei (1894 – 1983) was a Japanese painter and member of the Japanese Printmaking Association and the Children’s Illustration Society, producing numerous prints, illustrations and various writings.
In 1957, he was represented at the Tokyo Print Biennale.
He is best known for his illustrations for children, notably for the magazine Komodo no kuni, 1922-1933. He was a major influence on the Japanese illustration pope Tadanori Yokoo.
Frantisek Kupka, “self-portrait”
“The sky is an egg, the earth is its yolk.” Chag Heng
The beauty of simplicity!
Pablo Picasso, “Sitting Nude”, 1901.
I love the face in the mirror, which seems to be in dialogue with its original.
“Yellow and blue”, Jeffrey T. Larson (American, born in 1962)
Luiz Carlos Carrera, Brazil
“The laws of colour are inexpressibly beautiful because they are not due to chance.” Vincent Van Gogh
Photograph by DocUNC
Abstract portrait of a beautiful, serene girl in a yellow dress with flowers in her hair by Jacky Gerritsen.
Mixed media painting in mainly dark blue and soft yellow tones.