Research point: Some different approaches to colour theory and painting

I chose two painters of who lived at approximately the same time and looked at how they used colour in different ways: Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee (1979-1940) was a Painter of Swiss-German origin. Originally he was drawing and painting naturalistically but later turned to a more astract approach after a visit to Tunisia. His use of colour is very subtle with soft shadings. He reportedly excelled at drawing and graphic works from an early age on but had great difficulties with colour. Later he became a highly influential colour theorist. The visit to Tunisia in 1914 may have represented a major turning point because it inspired him to explore colour and find a personal approach, which was strongly connected to his musicality.

I chose two paintings which I found particularly interesting, “Black Columns in a Landscape” (1919) and “Tale à la Hoffman” (1921). Both paintings are rather small, around 20×30 cm. They are both watercolours mixed with pen and ink.

Paul Klee 1919 Black Columns in a Landscape

Paul Klee 1921 Tale à la Hoffmann

Klee’s use of colour was not naturalistic. This may have to do with his choice of mostly astract subjects. He seemed to use colour to convey mood and a particular atmosphere. He rarely used intense tones, but obtained relative colour intensity through the contrast to surrounding the more intense tones with paler shades of the same or contrasting colours.

The “Black columns in a landscape” employs more contrasting tones and almost no naturalistic elements, compared to the “Tales à la Hoffmann” with its dominant yellow shades around some small child-like line sketches human figures, stairs, an umbrella etc.
The eye seems to glide gently over the areas of similar tones, then is suddenly blocked by an area in a contrasting colour. The compositions create multiple pathways to wander around in the paintings. Thus for me the paintings are mystically interesting to look at again and again, because they cannot be understood in the same way as a naturalistic painting.

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian 1935 Composition C (No. III) with Red, Yellow and BluePiet Mondrian (1872 – 1944) was a Dutch painter who lived between the Netherlands and Paris, later in London and New York. Mondrian is mostly known for his graphic-style works after 1920, large-scale paintings of coloured squares and rectangles, enclosed by black lines and filled in few basic colours red, blue and yellow.

I chose Piet Mondrian because I remembered his very graphical, bold use of colour, for example “Composition C (No. III) with Red, Yellow and Blue”. I saw this as an extreme contrast in use of colour, compared to paintings of Paul Klee.

Piet Mondrian 1913 Tableau No. 2 - composition No. VIIThrough my research, I realized how both painters were both influenced by cubism. As an example, I include “Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII, 1913”, Oil on Canvas, which is a line based painting on a background of subtle colour tones and shades. The painting surprised me because I had not expected to see such subtle colouring from what I had previously known about Mondrian.

I was even more surprised when I searched still further back in time and found beautiful naturalistic landscape paintings. In extreme contrast to his later work, colour is here used naturalistically, including intense colours, colour contrasts and related colours. I chose the painting “Small farm on Nistelrode” (1904) to illustrate early works by Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian 1904 Small-farm-on-nistelrode

 

 

Sources: Paul Klee

Paintings

  • Black Columns in a Landscape, 1919; Watercolor, pen, and ink on paper , 8 x 10 3/8 in. (20.4 x 26.3 cm), The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1987 (1987.455.1) © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
  • Tale à la Hoffmann, 1921; Watercolor, pencil, and transferred printing ink on paper, bordered with metallic foil, 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. (31.1 x 24.1 cm), The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984 (1984.315.26) © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

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Sources: Piet Mondrian

Paintings

  • Small farm on Nistelrode, 1904, gouache and watercolor on paper, private collection
  • Tableau No. 2 composition No. VII, 1913, oil on canvas, 105 x 114 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
  • Composition C (No. III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935, oil on canvas, 56 x 52.2 cm, private collection

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