AFTERWARD - COLOR ART

In this book, I tried to build the necessary “wagon” with which the colorist artist could overcome a significant part of the path laid before him. My “wagon” is not a crew for people seeking comfort. This book is a textbook and its content is determined by the laws of color, given by nature. These laws sparkle in the colors of the rainbow and are clearly distinguishable on the specially designed color ball, where the delimited colors and their mixtures are brought to the polarity of black and white.

Black with its deep darkness is necessary so that the polychrome radiance of light can be defined within its borders. The luminous radiance of white - so that color can acquire material strength. A vibrant world of chromatic phenomena pulses between black and white. As long as color is associated with the objective world, we can perceive it and study its laws. And yet the essence of color remains hidden from our understanding and can only be realized in an intuitive way. Therefore, the rules and laws can only be guidelines on the way to the creation of a pictorial work.

None of the artists discovered so many rules in pictorial art as Leonardo da Vinci in his Treatise on Painting. But he said: “If you want to be guided only by the rules in your work, you will never achieve anything and confusion will reign in your works”, assuming that a person should go beyond science and not deny himself the desire to follow his own intuition.

Decisive in art are not expressive means, but a person with his own character and humanity. The first is the formation and development of personality, and then the possibility of creativity.

A serious study of color is an excellent tool for this purpose, for it leads to an understanding of the internal conditioning of phenomena. To recognize the existence of this conditionality, or necessity, is to penetrate the eternal laws of the natural world. To understand and accept it for yourself is to subordinate your will and serve the Creator, to become a Man.

In this book, I tried to analyze some works of art and make their hidden meaning more explicit. I chose mainly the works of old masters, because I believed that many readers are familiar with the originals. The laws of color that clearly appear in these works are timeless and just as important today as they were before.

For those who in the paintings of Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Bruegel, Cezanne and many other masters see only their objectivity and their symbolic content, the doors to the world of their artistic power and beauty will be closed forever. The meaning and purpose of all artistic aspirations is the release of the spiritual essence of form and color from their subordination to the objective world. And objectless art was born precisely from this desire.

The world we live in today is different than the human world of the 1560s or 1860s. Our world is created by inventors. They build cars, the meaning of which lies in their function. But machines are not a symbol of any idea; they are only the realization of purposeful thought.

Currently, the picture is also not a symbol. The meaning of its existence is hidden in itself, in its color and forms. For his works, the painter uses the plane of painting and paint, and he radiates life force himself, expressing his feelings under the influence of intuition and inspiration.

No matter how the art of painting develops in the future, the expressive power of color will always be the most important element of its existence.