Just over 270 years ago, a book was not only written about the use of color in painting, but also the first copy that, on its pages, explained how to create certain tones and change others by adding one, two, or three parts of water, demonstrating that there was chromatic life before Pantone.

Exactly in 1962, before Lawrence Herbert – founder of Pantone – created an innovative system to identify, match, and communicate colors, the artist A. Boogert mixed and defined colors in a handwritten book entitled “Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau”.

Throughout its 700 pages, A. Boogert provided the necessary pigment and water ratios to create each color with its tones and hues. To illustrate his explanations, he colored each page with the colors he mentioned. The result was a splendid, fairly comprehensive color guide that, had only one copy not been made, would have served as an indispensable tool for many artists in the 17th century, the Golden Age of Dutch painting.

As an ode to Pantone and the first essential color guide for the universe of creativity and design, Galería Azur Madrid presents a selection of images that weave together ideas, precepts, representations, and beliefs of artistic practices linked to color. This exquisite fusion of works transports us to the most remote origins of color, focusing on the purest pigments, the incidence of light and shadow on them, the texture with its curves, undulations, and lines, and the incorporated elements that, in a vibrant plot, simultaneously unite avant-garde works of art.

Starting from a “PANTONE” chromatic development, the curatorial proposal aims to convert light and color into a representative experience of the current era, which has transcended centuries to remain a fundamental tool in contemporary times.

Artworks