The Beautiful Power of Colour In an Artistic World

We look, we see, and we feel. But how often do we notice? Shape and form will affect the way we feel, what we see, but most of all, colour will impact us the most. It deeply influences our emotions, memories, and perceptions, partly because it taps into evolutionary responses like clear, bright blue skies being seen as good in order to create feelings of joy, calm, or energy, while also serving as powerful non-verbal communication and a way to express identity, connect with culture, and find aesthetic pleasure in the world. Find out more in The Beautiful Power of Colour In An Artistic World.

The Power of Colour

We are drawn to colour; it has a guttural effect on us, deeply influencing our emotions, memories, and perceptions, and tapping into evolutionary responses. It creates feelings of joy, calm, or energy, while also serving as powerful non-verbal communication and a way to express identity, connect with culture, and find aesthetic pleasure in the world. 

The Colour Wheel

Invented by Isaac Newton and refined by Johannes Itten, the colour wheel is a circular chart organizing colours to show their relationships, featuring primary (Red, Yellow, Blue), secondary (Green, Orange, Purple), and tertiary colors, acting as a tool in colour theory to find harmonious combinations for art and design by mixing primaries to get secondaries, and primaries with secondaries for tertiaries, helping understand hues, tints, and shades. 

Colour is vital for human evolution

It was vital to humans for evolutionary reasons, helping us identify food and danger, conveying messages like traffic lights, influencing moods and behaviours; think red for arousal, or anger, blue for calm and yellow for joy, creating atmosphere. It enhances memory and creates cultural meaning, making it fundamental to perception, cognition, and social interaction. 

Emotion & Mood

In the world of art, colour has always been vital because it powerfully conveys emotions, sets moods, creates atmosphere, and communicates meaning beyond words, engaging viewers psychologically and guiding their focus through symbolism, cultural associations, contrast, and harmony.

Western Artists and Colour

Artists use colour to express feelings, tell stories, define depth, and highlight important elements, making art more dynamic and resonant. But there is a handful of key people for whom colour was part of their signature.

Historical artists renowned for colour include J.M.W. Turner, known for radiant yellows;  Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens all used cochineal as a glaze, layering the pigment atop other reds to increase their intensity. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was known for his prolific use of green, and Claude Monet for his use of purple. All these artists laid the way for 20th-century creators who took the use of colour to another level.

The most colourful 20th-century paintings often come from movements like Fauvism, Expressionism, and Abstract Art, featuring artists. Artists such as Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Frida Kahlo, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, alongside Georgia O’Keeffe and Andy Warhol, all used intense hues to evoke emotion or create visual impact. 

The most respected 20th-century artists and Their Relationships With Colour.

Paul Klee 1879–1940

Image Left and above, Paul Klee, Red Balloon (Roter Ballon), 1922. Oil (and oil transfer drawing?) on chalk-primed gauze, mounted on board, 12 1/2 × 12 1/4 inches (31.7 × 31.1 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Klee was a Swiss-born German artist who excelled in experimenting with both colour and form. His innovative visual language was highly individual and was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored colour theory, writing about it extensively.

Flower Myth (Blumenmythos) 1918, watercolour on pastel foundation on fabric and newsprint mounted on board, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany

As much as he was an artist, he was also a teacher and theorist whose work and lectures revolutionised the understanding of colour in the 20th century. He ultimately believed that colour had both rhythmic and emotional qualities that would bring about profound responses in those viewing his works

Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist active in Germany during the late Belle Époque and Interwar eras. Generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art, he was born in Moscow and began painting studies at the age of 30.

“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmony, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”

Wassily Kandinsky

He first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmony, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”.

‘Blue Mountain” by Vasily Kandinsky, 1908-09, oil on canvas, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Wassily Kandinsky’s use of color was crucial because he believed colors possessed inherent spiritual vibrations, acting directly on the soul to evoke emotions, bypassing the need for physical objects; he saw art as a symphony where colors, like musical notes, created profound inner experiences, making color a primary tool for abstract expression, spiritual communication, and influencing human psychology, with blues receding inward and yellows expanding outward. 

Marc Chagall 1887 – 1985

Also mysticaly driven was Marc Chagall who used colour expressively, not realistically, to convey emotion, movement, and magic in his dreamlike worlds, employing vibrant hues like blues for love, fantasy, and spirituality, alongside bold palettes to define space, animate figures, and evoke memory and joy, making colour a central, living element telling stories of love, home, and the mystical. 

Inspired by Fauvism, Cubism, and Jewish folklore, making colours almost living entities that animate his fantastical scenes of floating figures, lovers, and folklore, bridging personal stories with universal themes of love, hope, and spirituality.

‘All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites’.

Marc Chagall

He saw colour as both chemistry and love, using it to sculpt, animate, and create depth, often contrasting bright colours with potent black and white, and transforming mediums like watercolour and gouache to achieve luminous, intense effects.  In essence, Chagall’s colours weren’t just decorative; they were the very soul of his paintings, telling stories, evoking deep feeling, and creating his unique, enchanting universe. 

Joan Miro 1893- 1983

Also had a strong relationship with color which was deeply symbolic, personal, and essential to his work. Using a vibrant palette of primary colours, red, blue, yellow, green, as well as black, to create a universe of biomorphic shapes and cosmic symbols, expressing emotions, dreams, and a connection to his Spanish heritage, moving beyond mere representation to make colour a language in itself, as seen in his “Colour of My Dreams” series. 

The Tilled Field Joan Miro

In his famous 1925 work, This Is the Colour of My Dreams, a vibrant blue, represented by a single blue patch on a white canvas, accompanied by the French phrase “Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves,” linking the colour to the subconscious and surrealist exploration of dreams. 

James Turrell

Born in 1943 in Los Angeles, James Turrell is a renowned artist known for his exploration of light and its interaction with space, colour, and human perception. Formed in neon and LED light installations featuring the colour gradients in light.

Sky-Space in Salzburg James Turrell

These installations create the illusion of walls appearing to float and include light planes that shift slowly behind an aperture, evoking both flatness and depth reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s paintings. Turrell’s work invites viewers to engage in a mindful observation of space, colour and light.

Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated the therapeutic effects of colour and its impact on our behaviour, moods, and thoughts. Colour can bring healing energy, soothe our frazzled nerves, and also motivate and empower us. It seems artists understood this long before the world of science did.

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