Exhibition explores artists' engagement with Prussian Blue colour

A new exhibition explores the engagement of 19 contemporary artists with the colour Prussian Blue that revolutionised the art world and inspired painters such as Pablo Picasso and Katsushika Hokusai to convey deep emotions. The exhibition showcases most entirely a new body of work made for the show, which includes a diversity of materials with varied methodologies of thinking about colour by the artists.

A new exhibition explores the engagement of 19 contemporary artists with the colour Prussian Blue that revolutionised the art world and inspired painters such as Pablo Picasso and Katsushika Hokusai to convey deep emotions. The exhibition, ''Prussian Blue: A Serendipitous Colour that Altered the Trajectory of Art'', which is being held at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art's Noida centre, has invited artists to explore, investigate and engage with the colour in their own unique manner. Curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, the exhibition features contemporary artists, including Anita Dube, Anju Dodiya, Alke Reeh, Astha Butail, Atul Dodiya, Desmond Lazaro, Mithu Sen, N S Harsha, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Parul Gupta, Prajakta Potnis, Ranbir Kaleka, Sumakshi Singh, Shambhavi, Thukral & Tagra , Vivan Sundaram, and Waqas Khan.

Lokhandwala said that the use of the blue pigment goes back to as early as the third millennia BC, when it could only be created by grinding down lapis lazuli stone, mined from the mountains of Afghanistan. Its rarity, complex process, and high price made it inaccessible to most artists, gaining the colour a status of privilege.

''For a long time, the colour was reserved for sacred subjects, such as the robes of religious figures, depictions of the Virgin Mary and other votive images commissioned paintings for the nobility during the Renaissance,'' Lokhandwala said. It was only in the early 18th century that two German alchemists accidentally created a deep blue colour in the lab, which came to be known as Prussian Blue or Berliner Blau, due to its geographic origins and because the Prussian army dyed its soldiers' jackets with the colour.

From Japanese woodblock artist and painter Katsushika Hokusai in the 19th century to Pablo Picasso in the 20th century used the colour to create some of the most iconic artworks known to the world.

While Hokusai painted ''The Great Wave Off Kanagawa'' and other prints in his ''Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji'' series, Picasso used the colour to paint a number of iconic works during his “Blue Period“ from 1901 to 1904.

''Honestly, I was truly surprised that such an important colour as Prussian Blue had not been explored in an exhibition space, making mine the first and unique worldwide exhibition of its kind. The exhibition showcases most entirely a new body of work made for the show, which includes a diversity of materials with varied methodologies of thinking about colour by the artists. This makes the show compelling, allowing the viewers to really get into the larger narrative,” Lokhandwala told PTI. The exhibition will be on show till December 10.