PICASSO + KANDINSKY ON COLOR COMMUNICATION

In the early years of 1900, two artists decided to use a special form of communication, not by words, but by colors. Pablo Picasso started his journey in 1902 with his main focus on human misery, sadness, and distress. Here, he started mainly using the color blue to demonstrate feelings which was the turning point to make the color blue more than a basic shadow color. Living between Paris and Barcelona, the artist discovered all shades of blue and initiated the blue period of his art and paintings. Not only the color was talking a lot here, but also the characters which Picasso painted expressed more than sadness: women were portrayed sadly and wearing a veil to enhance the feeling of grief. After a little recovery, Picasso slowly transformed his mood and feelings to something more positive by painting more pink shades in addition to the sad, but calm blue. So in 1904/1905, more brown and greyish pink shades come into the picture and the figures changed slowly too. We can still witness empty looking faces, no emotions, but the artist moved also on demonstrating us real people and their profession, just like his special periods of covering circus life and harlequins. A funny symbol, but actually so much deeper to understand—it is the

essence of love and friendship hiding beneath a clown‘s uniform. With painting softer and with more details, Picasso inivtes us to get to know the essence of life. Wassily Kandinsky decided to choose a special path, too. He left the world of objectives and came up with a new color and shape language. He formed a group called the blue rider, where the color blue symbolizes yearning spiritual completion. Kandinsky taught color studies at the famous Bauhaus school and he was a genius, when it comes to colors and their symbolism. He differentiated between physical and psychological effects and put the colors contrastive face to face. For example blue versus yellow: blue is associated with the sky, coldness, and calm— yellow which represents warmth, aggression, and edgy. Not a power couple, but some color tones just work together. It is interesting to see that there have been people before us who desperately think about color and what it can express to the outside world. Especially translating feelings seems to be so normal when thinking about colors and their natural effortless way of communicating without thinking. Let the colors talk.

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