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Aunty Mansa and daughter
Emmanuel Adiamah
Painting - 68.6 x 68.6 x 10.2 cm Painting - 27 x 27 x 4 inch
£6,915
The adventures of the desert
Mariusz Makula
Painting - 80 x 89.9 x 2 cm Painting - 31.5 x 35.4 x 0.8 inch
£422
Streets of Northern City
Mariusz Makula
Painting - 80 x 100.1 x 4.1 cm Painting - 31.5 x 39.4 x 1.6 inch
£422
Series: Portrait rendering #3
Keita Kushima
Painting - 90 x 70 x 3 cm Painting - 35.4 x 27.6 x 1.2 inch
£3,864
Hommage à Picasso et à Fernand Léger (noir et blanc)
Erró
Print - 57 x 81 x 1 cm Print - 22.4 x 31.9 x 0.4 inch
£809
Among the mountains
Alisa Onipchenko-Cherniakovska
Painting - 204 x 280 x 4 cm Painting - 80.3 x 110.2 x 1.6 inch
£25,299
La mort de Desdémone
Jean-Jacques Venturini
Painting - 89 x 116 x 4 cm Painting - 35 x 45.7 x 1.6 inch
£1,168
Une touche de modernité
Eric Munsch
Painting - 73 x 60 x 2 cm Painting - 28.7 x 23.6 x 0.8 inch
£944
Cabeza con cuernos
Nacho Eterno
Sculpture - 39 x 16 x 18 cm Sculpture - 15.4 x 6.3 x 7.1 inch
£2,076
Over-reaction: Squirreling half-eaten food in your bedroom again?!?! We can get mice!!!
Lauren Naomi
Painting - 121.9 x 274.3 x 4 cm Painting - 48 x 108 x 1.6 inch
£7,368
Stop wars, d'après Banksy
Patrick Cornée
Painting - 50 x 50 x 3 cm Painting - 19.7 x 19.7 x 1.2 inch
£1,078 £970
Let's go hiking
Katharina Hormel
Painting - 100 x 70 x 3 cm Painting - 39.4 x 27.6 x 1.2 inch
£1,078
Heavenly Plants No.6
Sumit Mehndiratta
Painting - 109.2 x 83.8 x 5.1 cm Painting - 43 x 33 x 2 inch
£899
Silence anticipation
Stanislav Lazarov
Painting - 35 x 35 x 2 cm Painting - 13.8 x 13.8 x 0.8 inch
£315
Soft abstraction VI
Tamara Bakhshinyan
Painting - 100 x 150 x 3.5 cm Painting - 39.4 x 59.1 x 1.4 inch
£2,336
Drawing 427
Sumit Mehndiratta
Fine Art Drawings - 41 x 58 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 16.1 x 22.8 x 0.4 inch
£539
Drawing 426
Sumit Mehndiratta
Fine Art Drawings - 58 x 41 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 22.8 x 16.1 x 0.4 inch
£539
Composition No. 385
Sumit Mehndiratta
Fine Art Drawings - 65 x 46 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 25.6 x 18.1 x 0.4 inch
£674
Composition No. 323
Sumit Mehndiratta
Painting - 30.5 x 30.5 x 0.1 cm Painting - 12 x 12 x 0 inch
£629
Drawing 335
Sumit Mehndiratta
Fine Art Drawings - 76.2 x 56 x 0.02 cm Fine Art Drawings - 30 x 22 x 0 inch
£629
Composition No.252
Sumit Mehndiratta
Painting - 63 x 41 x 0.1 cm Painting - 24.8 x 16.1 x 0 inch
£449
Blue, Peach and Black Washi abstract
Jan Sullivan Fowler
Painting - 76.2 x 76.2 x 2.5 cm Painting - 30 x 30 x 1 inch
£759
This too shall pass
Mikhail Baranovskiy
Painting - 80 x 60 x 2.5 cm Painting - 31.5 x 23.6 x 1 inch
£1,797
Signs from above
Mikhail Baranovskiy
Painting - 80 x 60 x 2.5 cm Painting - 31.5 x 23.6 x 1 inch
£1,078
Dream of the Thousand and One Nights Lights 2 - Rêve de Lumières des Mille et Une Nuits 2
Cecile Gonne Victoria
Painting - 30 x 30 x 4 cm Painting - 11.8 x 11.8 x 1.6 inch
£261
L'aventurière
Christiane Simon-Roques
Painting - 100 x 73 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 28.7 x 0.8 inch
£1,258
Personajes en blanco y negro
Enrique Pichardo
Painting - 50 x 70 x 1 cm Painting - 19.7 x 27.6 x 0.4 inch
£544
Couleurs et formes du monde - Gabriel, architecte de couleurs
Thomas Jeunet
Painting - 146 x 96 x 3.5 cm Painting - 57.5 x 37.8 x 1.4 inch
£3,145
Print Alphabet rehaussé 2
Bows
Fine Art Drawings - 42 x 29.7 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 16.5 x 11.7 x 0.4 inch
£180
Print Alphabet rehaussé 1
Bows
Fine Art Drawings - 42 x 29.7 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 16.5 x 11.7 x 0.4 inch
£180
Two Penguins
Dr Sanjay Arora
Photography - 40 x 60 x 2 cm Photography - 15.7 x 23.6 x 0.8 inch
£2,381
Stage Dance
Dr Sanjay Arora
Photography - 40 x 60 x 2 cm Photography - 15.7 x 23.6 x 0.8 inch
£2,381
Never another word
Mercedes Lagunas
Painting - 150 x 150 x 0.1 cm Painting - 59.1 x 59.1 x 0 inch
£2,437
Through the Pale Twilit Meadows
Katharina Husslein
Painting - 120 x 140 x 3 cm Painting - 47.2 x 55.1 x 1.2 inch
£3,325
La lune… miroir du temps
Maria-Pia Barberi
Painting - 100 x 40 x 4 cm Painting - 39.4 x 15.7 x 1.6 inch
£629
Pinçejat innovat taronja
Ferran Cartes Yerro
Sculpture - 27 x 27 x 6 cm Sculpture - 10.6 x 10.6 x 2.4 inch
£315
White
In physics, white is the sum of all the colours. To the human eye, white appears to be the total absence of colour. Amongst artists, white and its many uses in art are continuously evolving and challenging those who would embrace them. Is white, then, a non-colour, or an enhancer of colours? Intangible or material? Absence or excess?
Since Antiquity, white has been appreciated for its symbolic value. In Ancient Greece, where they would paint their statues, it was a sign of incompletion, whereas the Romans believed it showed pomp and imperialist virtue. With the rise of Christianity, white was used in opposition to black in order to emphasise moral dichotomies: the pure, divine white against the darkness. In some cases, however, white was used to show sickness or death, most notably in the pallid representations of the skeletal, crucified Christ.
In the Renaissance white was used to sublimate faces and backgrounds. Da Vinci even based his sfumato technique on the soft transition from light into darkness. Throughout the history of painting, white was considered precious for its ability to reflect light. It attracts the gaze even when used in the tiniest quantities, and illuminates the subject, drawing out stunning contrasts as seen in the works of Rembrandt, or in Vermeer's famous Girl with the Pearl Earring.
With the rise of Impressionism, white was used as the brightest tone amongst shades of grey. While Manet produced canvases which were forerunners to monochromes, including The Reader, which was almost pure white, Monet delivered a stunning gradient of whites whilst recreating the snow at his home in Giverny. The first true white monochrome appeared with the arrival of Malevitch's White Square on a White Background. The artist said 'I have broken the blue boundary of colour limits, and come out into the white'.
Modernists were equally passionate about white and valued it incredibly highly. Miro in particular questioned the status of white on canvases. In his painting Woman, Bird and Star white is in parts boldly painted, but is also distinctive for its absence around the star. Picasso, on the other hand, explored white in conjunction with his famous coloured periods. Piero Manzoni became famous thanks to his 'achromatic' paintings, a series of canvases produced exclusively in shades of white. Moving into the 20th century, white became synonymous with minimalist abstraction. For artists like Kandinsky, white was a cosmic colour, associated with a spiritual search for the absolute, guiding the artists as he seek to express his emotions.
Today, white remains an ever popular subject. Roman Opalka made his name creating a series of white numbers of a white background, while Daniel Arsham reinvents white walls in galleries by letting his artwork drip down onto them. White is a colour with multiple symbolic interpretations. The colour of divinity or humility; of purity and immaculate, of emptiness and absence, but always colour. If blue has Klein and red has Rothko, it appears that no artist has yet succeeded in fully mastering white – but maybe you'll find them in our selection!