Donna Huanca, VESUVIANITE, 2016. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Ten works in our upcoming auction demonstrate how color can be an integral part of an artist’s language — how it can become a subject itself, or be deeply tied to memory, identity, culture, or nature. Through their distinctive practices, we gain insight into the uniqueness of their individual approaches, as well as discover surprising similarities between them. What’s more, these works invite us to discover color in other works with fresh eyes. And what better time than June to see the full spectrum with pride?
Donna Huanca
Donna Huanca, VESUVIANITE, 2016. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Donna Huanca imparts multi-sensory experiences in viewers through a psychotropic palette inspired by colors that appear in nature but seem unreal. Inspired by geology, botany, and avian life, she seeks out striking tones found in unexpected places like reefs and bird plumage. She often revisits eye-catching blue tones, relating them to the sky, seas, and even gemstones. Color is at the core of her practice, as is an exploration of Indigenous communication methods and the natural world.
Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente, Untitled, 1972. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Though this work revels in blue as much as Huanca’s, Spanish-American artist Esteban Vicente (1903–2001) approaches the color with distinct intentions. Vicente was a key figure of first-generation Abstract Expressionism, but unlike the more gestural approach of his counterparts, he used color as a primary means of conveying light, space, mood, and structure. From the mid-1950s, he moved towards a pure experience of light and space expressed by color, and in his later works, like this one, he focused on an interplay of light and structure through thinly applied pigments. The beautiful results of this process convey a sense of vibration that the artist described as akin to “inner landscapes.”
Jack Youngerman
Jack Youngerman, Black, Yellow, Red, 1964. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Color is also a defining characteristic in the work of American abstract artist Jack Youngerman (1926–2020). But for him, his approach to color was informed by early experiences in Paris and an introduction to European Modernism through artists like Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian. Youngerman’s expansive, dynamic, and highly saturated hues make his abstract forms come alive, and the delineation of positive and negative space through crisp contours lends his works the appearance of a Matisse cutout. His forms exist somewhere between simplified organic shapes and pure geometric abstraction, which, like both Huanca and Vicente, impresses the sensation of nature.
Julian Opie
Julian Opie, Enis and Tina walking, 2010. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
While color is crucial in the work of British artist Julian Opie (b. 1958), viewers may be surprised when they learn the artist is colorblind. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, Opie’s colorblindness allows for more deliberate artistic choices. Across his works, the figures’ outlines are filled with flat areas of even-toned color, without blending, shading, or texture, reinforcing his works’ graphic, sign-like quality. His vibrant and limited color palette helps define the essence of his forms, rather than suggesting reality. We can see this clearly in Enis and Tina walking, where the contrast between blue and orange helps the image pop. This use of color also aids Opie’s works in their immediacy, showing how strong color and simple forms can convey deeper meanings with even a quick glance.
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf, Hope, 1991. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Like Julian Opie, American artist Kenny Scharf’s (b. 1958) work is also rooted in Pop Art and prioritizes color. He pulls his coloristic instincts from popular culture and street art, adding a playful and psychedelic sensibility drawn from his upbringing in California in the 1960s and ‘70s. Across his works, which he has described as “Pop Surrealism,” we find neon primary colors, electric pastels, and rich earth tones, as seen in the joyful work Hope, wherein the colors seem to leap off the surface in an expression of the youthful optimism and freedom for which the artist is so well loved.
Josh Sperling
Josh Sperling, Untitled, 2015. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Like Opie, American artist Josh Sperling (b. 1984) separates color choice from the creation of his compositions — not to diminish the importance of color, but to heighten it. And like both Scharf and Opie, Sperling was inspired by 1960s and ‘70s imagery. In his case, Minimalist Art, road signs, and, later, 1980s Memphis design. His works blur the lines between painting and sculpture in his distinctive use of shaped canvases. Each element of his compositions is assigned its own color, imbuing their forms with vitality. He often completes his compositions digitally in grayscale before testing colors on small paper maquettes. Unrelenting in his pursuit of understanding color, Sperling has developed his own extensive color system comprising more than 1200 proprietary blends of paint. “Color is surprising,” the artist explains. “Every time I think I understand it, I try something new and find that I learn something new.”
Jason Martin
Jason Martin, Vicente II, 2014. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
British artist Jason Martin (b. 1970) also explores the boundary between painting and sculpture, but for Martin, the focus is on the materiality of paint itself. His works are often monochromatic, exploring a full tonality within a single hue through the three-dimensional qualities of space, light, and shadow. Color is both the genesis and subject of his works, and he uses thick, fluid layers of paint, custom comb-like tools, and his bare hands to sculpt energetic earth-like ridges, trenches, and swirls from the paint, emphasizing its viscosity and luminosity. Curiously, like Esteban Vicente, Martin has spoken of his work as a “mental landscape,” remarking, “I’ve always viewed myself as a landscape painter dressed up as an abstractionist.”
Jane Dickson
Jane Dickson, Woman on Stairs (Study for Etching), 1984. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Martin’s “mental landscapes” give way to the “psychogeography” of American artist Jane Dickson’s fascination with urban nocturnal environments and artificial illumination. Early on, she was lauded for her works depicting the glow of electric lighting in New York’s Times Square, where she worked night shifts. This 1984 oilstick work shows her ability to capture the eerie glow of an urban apartment building’s staircase, and the contradiction between the danger and promise of city nightlife. Against the hazy glow of the colorful warm light and cool shadows, we wonder who this figure is looking for, friend or foe, and our gaze follows hers into the depths.
Simphiwe Ndzube
Simphiwe Ndzube, Madolo, 2019. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Just as Jane Dickson’s surroundings inform her use of color, South African artist Simphiwe Ndzube (b. 1990) utilizes the vibrant colors of African street life. Employing a palette reminiscent of African textiles, buildings, advertising imagery, and street art, Ndzube’s works are rich in symbolic meanings. He is particularly interested in pink, and the color makes up the flesh tones of many figures in his works. As the artist has explained, “When you cut the body open, there is an instant of pink flesh before the wound floods with blood and before it rebuilds itself.” This contrast of conflict and hope, threat and reaction, is at the core of his practice. But throughout his works, we find these ideas rendered in uplifting hues, the colors bursting from the surfaces in a spellbinding and imaginative way that is, above all, hopeful.
Gunther Gerzso
Gunther Gerzso, Paisaje, 1978–1980. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
For Gunther Gerzo (1915–2000), a close look at his surroundings was also influential. His coloration evokes the natural and built environments of his native Mexico — the blues of minerals, the reds of terracotta structures, or the greens of jadeite or vegetation. He blended his colors carefully for subtlety, using thin layers of transparent color and traditional glazing techniques, influenced by Renaissance masters. His vibrant surfaces imprint on our memory with jewel-like hues, glazed in a way that glistens with a hardness akin to colored diamonds. This eye-catching use of color as related to nature brings us full circle, reminding us of Donna Huanca’s practice today.
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