Colour Theory in Abstract Painting: How to Build a Palette That Works

"How do you choose your colours?" That's the question that comes up most often at my exhibitions, right after the one about price. Contrary to popular belief, a palette that works owes nothing to chance or to a simple gut feeling — it follows principles of contrast and harmony that are nearly two centuries old, principles that geometric abstraction makes far more visible than figurative painting, where the subject usually pulls attention away from colour itself. Trained in Buenos Aires and São Paulo before settling in the Tarn, here's how I apply the basics of colour theory, canvas after canvas, in my own studio.

What is colour theory, and why does it matter so much in geometric abstraction?

Colour theory covers the principles that govern how colours interact with one another: which hues reinforce each other, which cancel each other out, which create a sense of depth or movement. In a figurative painting, these mechanisms often stay in the background, masked by the depicted subject. In a geometric abstract composition, where no scene distracts the eye, colour literally becomes the subject — it's what builds the balance of the canvas, just as much as line or shape does. Understanding these principles doesn't dampen the spontaneity of the gesture — if anything, it gives you the tools to master it.

Complementary contrast: a law nearly two centuries old

We owe the formulation of the law of simultaneous colour contrast to French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, in the first half of the 19th century: two complementary hues — opposite each other on the colour wheel, like blue and orange, or violet and yellow — each appear more vivid when placed side by side than when seen separately. A century later, Swiss painter Johannes Itten, who taught colour at the Bauhaus, systematised that intuition into a full method still taught in most art schools today. That same principle structures much of contemporary geometric abstraction: complementary contrast creates a visual tension the eye never tires of following.

Five principles for building an abstract painting palette that holds together

Here are the markers I use myself before the first layer of paint touches a canvas:

• —Choose one dominant colour and build the composition around it, rather than lining up several hues of equal visual weight
• —Lean on a pair of complementaries — blue and orange, violet and yellow, red and green — for maximum contrast without losing the canvas's balance
• —Keep the most saturated colour to a smaller area — too generous a block of the boldest hue overwhelms the rest of the composition instead of structuring it
• —Let a vivid palette breathe with a more neutral zone — white, grey or black — that gives the eye a pause between two areas of intense colour
• —Test the palette at a small scale before committing to the final format — a harmony that works on a ten-centimetre sketch doesn't always hold up on a large canvas

Warm colours, cool colours: composing with temperature, not just hue

Beyond the colour wheel, every colour carries a perceived temperature: red, orange and yellow read as warm — they seem to advance toward the viewer and take up space; blue, green and violet read as cool — they seem to recede and open up depth. A geometric composition that alternates warm and cool surfaces creates movement and rhythm even without a single curved line or expressive brushstroke — colour alone makes the planes advance and recede against one another.

A colour never exists alone on a canvas — it's only truly itself in contact with its neighbour.

My palette: a Latin American inheritance, calculated in my studio in the Tarn

My own palette inherits directly from the concrete and neo-concrete tradition I trained in between Buenos Aires and São Paulo: bold, saturated colour rather than a restrained one. Polarité Opposée in fact takes its title from this very principle of complementary contrast, pushed to its most tense point. In Reflets de Joie or Synthèse d'Or, it's a dominant colour — warm and golden — that structures the canvas, punctuated with cooler accents to avoid monotony. And in Blanc Immaculé, where colour nearly disappears altogether in favour of a range of whites and creams built up with a palette knife, it's colour theory itself that, through its near-total absence, hands the stage over to texture and relief. You can see these three approaches side by side in the Full Collection, and find out at which upcoming exhibitions across France, Spain and Andorra you can see these contrasts in real conditions on the News page.