Monochrome Painting

Paintings made in a single colour, or close shades of one, a format that became a recurring test for abstract art.

162 works · 10 related artists

About

A single-colour canvas looks like the end of painting, and many artists have treated it as a starting point. Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918) sets a tilted white square on a slightly different white. In Moscow in 1921 Alexander Rodchenko showed three canvases in pure red, yellow and blue and declared that painting had reached its conclusion.

Post-war artists reopened the question. Yves Klein registered the formula for his International Klein Blue in 1960 and rolled it over canvases and sponges. Ad Reinhardt's late black paintings hide a faint cross of near-black squares that appears only after minutes of looking, and Robert Ryman spent decades on white, varying brush, support and fixings. In Korea, Dansaekhwa painters such as Park Seo-Bo built pale surfaces from repeated pencil marks and layered hanji paper. With one colour, texture, edge, sheen and scale carry almost all of the meaning.