Exhibition

Innerworlds: emotion, spirituality, and the colour blue

Devonport Regional Gallery

Innerworlds: emotion, spirituality, and the colour blue 

‘The deeper the blue the more It beckons man Into the Infinite, awakening in him a longing for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural. It Is the colour of the heavens just as we imagine it.’
-Wassily Kandinsky, 1912, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Blue is the vastest colour. It is the colour of the sky and ocean, of great distances (far away mountains appear blue), and connotes the most elusive and abstract parts of our interior lives. From its depth, the colour blue evokes the infinite and the divine. The Virgin Mary is depicted wearing blue robes as she ascends to Heaven, and Vishnu is depicted with blue skin. Blue evades the tangible and easily defined. It is the rarest colour in the botanical world. Blue light reduces the appetite and inhibits sleep, thus blue brings emotional and spiritual states at the expense of bodily comfort.

These qualities have long been observed by artists. In 1901 when he fell into a deep depression, Picasso painted in blue. Around the same time, a group of German Expressionist artists formed, calling themselves Der Blau Reiter (The Blue Rider), referencing the journey from the real world to an imaginary one. And, when Yves Klein sought a colour that would accurately communicate the infinite immaterial space surrounding the universe, he created International Klein Blue.

This exhibition is of works from the Devonport Regional Gallery’s Permanent Collection.

 

Image: Barbie Kjar, Come to me, oh green glass buoy, 1996, Pastel on paper, 75 x 56 cm, Devonport Regional Gallery Permanent Collection, 1996.009

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Date

Nov 02 2024 - Dec 07 2024
Ongoing...

Location

Little Gallery - paranaple arts centre