Category Archives: COLOUR SERIES

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham made her name in the mid-20th century as a leading figure of the radical St Ives School in postwar Cornwall. But her long and varied career extended well beyond this timeframe, lasting up until her passing in 2004. She continued to be an innovator in her later years, delving into new territory that…

Lee Krasner was an inimitable pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, storming her way into the 1950s New York art scene with bold, bombastic paintings. Fleshy, soft shades of beige like that of MUSHROOM Linen are nestled into some of her most famous works of art, and their warm, earthy shades bring in a living, human presence….

Warm rust reds like AUBURN Linen tinged many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s most famous paintings, invoking dry autumn leaves, worn out buildings or the barren wilderness of old America. O’Keeffe was one of the most pioneering painters of the early to mid-20th century and she captured the spirit of America during this momentous period in history…

Austrian artist and writer Oskar Kokoschka made a remarkable contribution to early 20th century culture, spearheading a series of daring and inventive new visual languages. In his early career, he was a pioneering decorative artist, illustrating fantastical stories with a flat, Oriental style, while his mature art was swirling with wild, expressionistic energy. Throughout these…

Shimmering silvers like MIRAGE GRAY are a hallmark feature of British artist Bridget Riley’s art, allowing her to create mesmerising depth, movement and space. Riley is widely recognised today as the iconic leader of 1960s Op Art, and she pushed the visual effects of pattern to the extreme, exploring how dots, wavy lines and patterns…

British painter Roger Hilton was one of the most pioneering abstract painters of his generation, emerging out of the mid-20th century with a bold and uncompromising style. He had an innate ability to merge tactile expressionism with ordered simplicity, producing images that confidently dominate the space around them. Striking passages of colour are a vital…

Drama is at the heart of Pierre Soulages’ art, and he achieves it through stark, theatrical means. A leader in 20th century European Abstract Expressionism, Soulages pioneered a bold, striking language, combining dark, enigmatic shades of indigo like MEDIEVAL BLUE with jet black, ultramarine and cerulean. He swept them in grand gestures across his artworks with…

ROYAL BLUE linen has the brilliant vibrancy of the Mediterranean Sea as it stretches outwards into an infinite horizon of azure blue. French painter Henri Matisse spent the majority of his life in Nice, where this same limitless blue light filtered into his mind’s eye, to be reimagined on canvas as fields of electrifying ultramarine….

Wassily Kandinsky lived and breathed colour, letting it infiltrate his entire life. His impassioned, ferocious paintings are a testament to this, with their noisy, clanging clashes of dazzling brilliance that exude a spirit of endless optimism and hope. He was a great leader in the 20th century European avant-garde, taking art into the great and…

Cubist painter Georges Braque celebrated the ambient power of warm, naturalistic colours throughout his career, bringing rich and appealing earthy tones like LODEN GREEN into many of his most famous paintings. A pioneering French Cubist alongside Pablo Picasso, Braque’s limited hues initially gave him room to focus on wildly experimental designs without letting bright colours…

Post-war British artist Patrick Heron was a colourist at heart, creating noisy, expressive paintings that seem to fizz and pop with life. He often brought sombre shades of purple, indigo and blue into his abstract paintings, letting it meander in velvety ribbons across white backgrounds, or seep into endless pools of darkness. BLUE ICE’s cool…

Cool, icy greys like VAPOR BLUE are a mainstay in Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s art, capturing the freezing, oceanic air of her native Cornwall. A leading member of the St Ives artists group in Cornwall, England, Barns-Graham was entranced by the steely silver of the ocean and its surrounding rocks. She painted, drew, and printed abstract visions…

American painter Roland Petersen makes paintings that are streaked with angular slabs of sunlight, slotted together with the appealing playfulness of a tangram puzzle. A leading member of the Bay Area Figurative School in 1960s San Francisco, Petersen was one of a generation who rejected Abstract Expressionism for a return to figuration, combining all the…

ROSE SMOKE’s sweet, tart pink coloured Robert Delaunay’s kaleidoscopic art, filling it with the bright freshness of summer. Delaunay was a leading figure in the early 20th century School of Paris, and his art encapsulated the joyful anticipation of the era, a time when rising industrial change promised a life of danger, thrill and adventure….

Expressionist artist Chaim Soutine made meaty, muscular paintings loaded with great slabs and strokes of paint; they twist, curl and contort across his canvases in an endless state of flux. Like many artists of the early 20th century Soutine painted a heightened, exaggerated version of the real world, one lit up by iridescent colours and…