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Le Cordier
Paul de Chatelperron
Fine Art Drawings - 60 x 114 x 2 cm Fine Art Drawings - 23.6 x 44.9 x 0.8 inch
€1,891
Partition de printemps
Odette Muller
Painting - 40 x 80 x 2 cm Painting - 15.7 x 31.5 x 0.8 inch
€1,000
En équilibre
Marie-Odile Wagner
Painting - 100 x 100 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 39.4 x 0.8 inch
€1,600
Ikarian landscape (Greek Island)
Konstantinos Tsachas
Painting - 40 x 53 x 3 cm Painting - 15.7 x 20.9 x 1.2 inch
€6,450
Papaver 2
Béa Bealaff-Girotto
Fine Art Drawings - 20 x 20 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 7.9 x 7.9 x 0.4 inch
€600
Zebras under the African sky
PickWick
Painting - 120 x 40 x 2 cm Painting - 47.2 x 15.7 x 0.8 inch
€800 €720
Silencieusement, elle glissait sur l’air
Maylis Bourdet
Painting - 90 x 90 x 2 cm Painting - 35.4 x 35.4 x 0.8 inch
€1,360
Metaphysical weight (2) (after pina bausch) forbidden collage (8)
Julien Delagrange
Painting - 180 x 120 x 0.1 cm Painting - 70.9 x 47.2 x 0 inch
€6,600
Peau de mur 26
Pascale Morelot-Palu
Painting - 100 x 73 x 3 cm Painting - 39.4 x 28.7 x 1.2 inch
€2,060
Peau de Mur 23
Pascale Morelot-Palu
Painting - 116 x 89 x 3 cm Painting - 45.7 x 35 x 1.2 inch
€2,960
Peau de Mur 22
Pascale Morelot-Palu
Painting - 130 x 97 x 3 cm Painting - 51.2 x 38.2 x 1.2 inch
€3,260
Peau de Mur 21
Pascale Morelot-Palu
Painting - 130 x 97 x 3 cm Painting - 51.2 x 38.2 x 1.2 inch
€3,260
Muse routine
Mikhail Baranovskiy
Painting - 100 x 70 x 1.5 cm Painting - 39.4 x 27.6 x 0.6 inch
€2,000
8th Position Silhouette
Tyler Shields
Photography - 45.7 x 45.7 cm Photography - 18 x 18 inch
€2,397
Abstraction #3
Carlos Arriagada
Photography - 50 x 40 x 0.1 cm Photography - 19.7 x 15.7 x 0 inch
€1,250
Abstraction #2
Carlos Arriagada
Photography - 50 x 40 x 0.1 cm Photography - 19.7 x 15.7 x 0 inch
€1,400
Kaleidoscope 66 BW
Michael Filonow
Photography - 101.6 x 81.3 x 0.3 cm Photography - 40 x 32 x 0.1 inch
€810
Kiliney Beach - Ireland
Marko Fenske
Painting - 38.1 x 48.3 x 0.5 cm Painting - 15 x 19 x 0.2 inch
€767
Soylent Green
Deborah Bakos
Painting - 76 x 102 x 4 cm Painting - 29.9 x 40.2 x 1.6 inch
€1,425 €1,283
La fusée érotique (a tribute to Haring)
Dr. Love
Painting - 30 x 40 x 0.2 cm Painting - 11.8 x 15.7 x 0.1 inch
€49
Pop Cola Green
Alessandro Padovan
Sculpture - 30 x 30 x 6 cm Sculpture - 11.8 x 11.8 x 2.4 inch
€500
Hands, The Sugar Project
Amrita Bilimoria
Photography - 49 x 48.3 x 0.5 cm Photography - 19.3 x 19 x 0.2 inch
€1,438
Tea time, Sweet Home series
Olha Vlasova
Painting - 49.5 x 29.5 x 2 cm Painting - 19.5 x 11.6 x 0.8 inch
€450
The Hollowed Nexus I
Palak Modi
Painting - 91.44 x 91.44 x 3 cm Painting - 36 x 36 x 1.2 inch
€2,450
Forest magic (snowdrop) - limited edition of 21
Valentin Zaharia
Photography - 70 x 90 x 1 cm Photography - 27.6 x 35.4 x 0.4 inch
€559
Sunset snowed in Paris - France Belle Epoque painting + frame
Francesco Tammaro
Painting - 40 x 50 x 1 cm Painting - 15.7 x 19.7 x 0.4 inch
€815
Le bien et le mal (2)
Chantal Westby
Painting - 122 x 91 x 5 cm Painting - 48 x 35.8 x 2 inch
€2,400
Cascading Waves of the Caribbean
Elena Lukina
Painting - 80 x 100 x 2 cm Painting - 31.5 x 39.4 x 0.8 inch
€4,680
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!