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Being an artist is no easy feat. It can take years of practice mastering the arts of drawing, draftsmanship, and composition. But without inherent talent, those skills alone won't guarantee success.
Alternatively, you could take a different approach: Splash some paint onto a canvas and sell it for millions. Here are 10 artists who have produced pieces using only one color. Whether these are masterpieces or not is up to how you perceive their significance.
10. Abstract Painting Ad Reinhardt
Adolf “Ad” Reinhardt was a New York-based abstract painter and an early advocate of abstract expressionism—the subconscious use of colors and shapes. His initial works featured geometric forms and conventional techniques. However, after the 1940s, he transitioned to creating pieces using only one color.
For the final decade of his life, Reinhardt produced a collection of square canvases entirely painted black. These were referred to as his 'ultimate paintings.' Once these black squares were completed, he believed that nothing else remained for anyone to paint.
At first glance, the paintings might seem devoid of any features. However, subtle differences exist. Recognizing them requires considerable time and dedication, which not everyone is willing to invest. When these works were first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one viewer even canceled their membership in protest.
9. Black Square Kazimir Malevich
In 1913, the same year that Ad Reinhardt was born, Kazimir Malevich anticipated Reinhardt's ultimate paintings with his own black square. While Reinhardt filled his canvas entirely with black, Malevich simply painted a black square at the center of his artwork. He wrote, 'In the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to liberate art from the constraints of the real world, I sought refuge in the form of the square.'
Black Square was considered by some to be the 'first painting that wasn’t a depiction of something.' Malevich himself referred to it as the 'zero point of art,' signifying everything that came after it as modern.
Although the painting was originally a solid black, time has caused a network of cracks to form across the surface, revealing the white beneath.
8. White Paintings Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg also created another series of black paintings during the early part of his career. These works, painted over newspaper glued to canvas, resemble the texture of peeling bark. Alongside this, he also worked on a series of white paintings.
The five pieces in the White series are essentially groups of one, two, three, four, or seven identical white canvases displayed together. Initially, these works were dismissed as a mere gimmick, but today they are displayed in galleries worldwide. Over time, as the paint began to degrade, Rauschenberg’s friends were called upon to repaint them several times to preserve their appearance.
Rauschenberg was a close friend of composer John Cage, who famously composed a piece titled 4’33”, in which a pianist or other instrumentalists remain silent for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The piece, in turn, is filled with the ambient sounds of the surrounding environment. This composition might serve as the perfect soundscape for these paintings.
7. Monochrome White Painting Li Yuan-chia
Li Yuan-chia, a prominent Chinese artist of the 20th century, worked across various media including painting, sculpture, furniture design, and hanging mobiles. In 1963, he created Monochrome White Painting. While it may appear as a blank white surface at first glance, closer inspection reveals subtle features.
Cardboard circles were affixed to the canvas and coated with the same white as the background. Li referred to these circles as 'cosmic points,' considering them to be both the origin and the end of all things. These dots symbolized the placement of objects within the vast expanse of the universe. The painting was originally titled 2=2-2.
6. The Dylan Painting Brice Marden
Brice Marden titled The Dylan Painting after his friend Bob Dylan as Marden created it in support of Dylan’s career. However, by the time the piece was finished, Dylan, a future Nobel Laureate, had already surpassed Marden in fame. As a result, the painting remained in Marden's possession.
The canvas was treated with a mixture of turpentine and beeswax, to which a gray hue was added. The artist then used a spatula to smooth the surface, leaving behind marks that attested to his process. A strip of the canvas was intentionally left unpainted at the bottom, where paint was allowed to drip, and additional marks were made to showcase the method of creation.
5. Achrome Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni is renowned for his ironic approach to art. One of his most famous works is titled Artist’s Shit, consisting of ninety cans allegedly filled with the artist’s excrement and sold for the price of their weight in gold. Despite this, he also explored more traditional media.
Manzoni's series known as Achromes appears white but was, according to the artist, actually colorless. He began with simple white canvases, some of which were painted thickly to highlight the texture of the paint. Later pieces were scraped and marked with lines.
In the later stages of his series, Manzoni transitioned from canvas to materials like cotton, acrylic resin, fiberglass, and even painted bread rolls. Additionally, he began incorporating pigments that would evolve in color over time.
4. Surrogate Paintings Allan McCollum
Allan McCollum has simplified paintings into a more basic, generic format. His works serve as stand-ins for paintings. While they look like paintings encased in frames, they are actually plaster casts painted to mimic paintings. There is no difference between the painting inside and its frame. Each piece is distinct, yet mass-produced and crafted by hand.
Each 'painting' within the 'frame' is devoid of features, showing no trace of the artist’s hand. McCollum’s studio is organized like an assembly line, with his assistants involved at each production stage. The Surrogate Paintings bridge the divide between the realms of art and automation.
3. IKB 79 Yves Klein
Historically, the color blue was a rare sight in artwork. The pigments for blue hues were costly and difficult to obtain. Lapis lazuli, the key ingredient in ultramarine, was sourced from Afghanistan. Yves Klein, however, made blue the central theme of his life’s work.
In 1946, while on a beach with his friends, Klein gazed up at the vast blue sky. He raised his hand, signed his name in the air, and claimed the sky as his own. He later recalled the moment:
“That day, lying on the beach of Nice, I began to despise the birds that fluttered through my blue, cloudless sky. They seemed to puncture holes in what I considered my most magnificent creation.”
Collaborating with a pigment manufacturer, Klein developed and trademarked his own distinct version of ultramarine, naming it 'International Klein Blue.'
2. Veil Shirazeh Houshiary
Shirazeh Houshiary is an Iranian artist and a former nominee for the highly regarded Turner Prize. Her conceptual artworks are part of collections at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Collection.
Her 1999 painting 'Veil' initially seems like a simple black square, yet Houshiary views it as a self-portrait. In Arabic, she wrote Sufi phrases in graphite across the black canvas. These words are barely perceptible, even from a close distance. Houshiary sees her creations as existing in the space between painting and drawing.
1. Grey Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter’s artistic range spans from intricately detailed, nearly photo-realistic portraits to dynamic, vibrant abstracts. He also designed a stained glass window for the Cologne Cathedral, composed of vivid, colorful squares of glass. Alongside these works, Richter has produced a series of 'grey paintings.'
The 'grey paintings' vary in shades of gray, from smooth, featureless matte pieces to intricate, complex patterns. Most were created in the 1960s and ’70s. Richter views grey as the ideal color to symbolize emptiness, explaining, 'It does not trigger off feelings or associations, it is actually neither visible nor invisible.'
