Crazy for Colours!

Crazy for Colours!

It's all about colour this week - and celebrating artists who use the brightest of colours in their artworks. Read on to find out more...


What to watch

This week’s NEW release,‘Sinbad the Sailor’ by Paul Klee, tells the story of the fictional mariner and hero of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’. In this classic Arabian tale, Sinbad goes on seven voyages where he encounters monsters and supernatural events. Klee represents this in his painting, which depicts Sinbad fighting with three large marine creatures. Klee's careful choices of colour undulate across the canvas and make the scene appear almost dreamlike, adding to the mystical nature of the story. Watch our presenter Heather, in this film for ages 7-11, to find out more Klee's use of colour.

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Did You Know?

Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist and a pioneer of abstract art. However, his art was in fact banned in Germany during the rise of Nazism in the late 1930s. During this period hundreds of his paintings were seized, of which 17 were put on display in the Nazi’s notorious ‘degenerate art’ exhibition of 1937, alongside artworks by Picasso, Chagall and Mondrian. This didn’t stop Klee though, creating around 10,000 paintings throughout his career. Sadly he died in 1940, and never saw the fall of Nazi Germany. He is now recognised for his work on colour theory and as one of the most important artists of the 20th Century.

Don't Miss!

Perhaps the most famous artist known for using bright colours is American painter Ellsworth Kelly. The art world is celebrating what would have been his 100th birthday, with a number of exhibitions dedicated to his career. The biggest being at Glenstone Museum, Maryland, where over 70 works will be on display. He grew to prominence in the fifties, at the same time as the Abstract Expressionists, but whilst artists like Jackson Pollock created works full of random flicks of paint, Kelly’s canvases are made up of bright blocks of colour and hard edges. He kept working right up until his death in 2015; pictured is his work 'Spectrum IX' made the year previously. 

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