The color yellow in art

Wolfgang Laib collects pollen from a huge variety of flowers and plants. He then scatters the bright yellow dust to create rectangles and other shapes – and depending on the component the finished works are then given names like “Pollen from Hazelnut” or “Pollen from Dandelion”. His poetic works, so far removed from the jumped-up art scene, earned Laib the Japanese “Praemium Imperiale”, which is considered the most important art priz

Peter Halley likes to use colors of dazzling vibrancy in his installations and paintings. He designed the SCHIRN rotunda using a garish yellow, which continues to shine in the eyes even some time after a visit. Incidentally, the same applies to a visit to the first floor, which is illuminated with black light – here Halley uses the complementary color blue, which after a few minutes spent lingering mutates into yellow as soon as the observer closes his or her eyes.

“Dripbox – Yellow White” is the title of a work by Johannes Girardoni, which draws the observer under its spell thanks purely to its sheer vibrancy. To create it, the American sculptor with Austrian roots made use of natural beeswax, which he applied like varnish to a weathered wooden wall.

BIG YELLOW ANIMALS I: Urs Fischer is known for beautiful absurdities, which occasionally get on the nerves of many a critic. The New York-based artist had his 20-ton, seven-meter-high “Giant Yellow Teddy Bear” temporarily erected on the busy Park Avenue where, crumpled in on itself and with a table lamp stuck through its back, it soon became a popular photo motif.

Another Dutchman, Piet Mondrian, became world-famous thanks to his composition paintings in which he painted the primary colors alongside the so-called “non-colors” in geometric grids. Here, yellow played a special role as one of the three primary colors – and on multiple occasions was also presented by itself (for example in “Composition with Yellow”, from 1936).