Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet – this phrase, attributed to Paul Klee, culminates several centuries of European reflection on the aesthetic role of color. It also reverses the hierarchy founded on the Renaissance distinction between rational disegno (drawing) and capricious colorito. Although it is uncertain whether Klee uttered these words, they echo the awareness characteristic of modernism that visibility arises at the intersection of light and consciousness. This presentation will consider color as means of artistic expression in the context of knowledge in physics and biology. Using Guido Reni's painting "L'Union du dessin et de la couleur" as an example, the historical dynamics of color's status as an art medium will be outlined, in the context of knowledge about the nature of electromagnetic radiation's impact on the human perceptual apparatus. Does color exist? And if so, in light, in an object, or in the subject's nervous system? By pointing out the complex factors influencing the perception of chromatic phenomena (the object's own characteristics, the conditions prevailing in the environment and the physiology of perception), I will consider, in reference to skepticism and phenomenology, the reasons why color was treated in art theory as an unstable and subjective emotional aspect.

Painter, curator and author of essays on art. A member of the Polish Association of Art Historians and the editorial committee of the Annals of Silesian Art. He has edited several collective publications and exhibition catalogs. Scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, the Bavarian Government, and non-governmental organizations. Laureate of the Painting Festival in Szczecin and the Bielska Jesień Painting Biennale. Focused on catastrophic motifs, vanitas iconography, and the aesthetics of destruction. His practice refers to the tradition of the Kunstkammer, biomorphism and sci-fi. He has held artistic residencies in Paris, Munich, Königshein, Fulda, Borobudur, and Palermo. His works were presented at the State Art Gallery in Sopot, the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, the National Museum and the Wrocław Contemporary Museum, the Manggha Art Centre in Cracow, the National Museum in Szczecin, the Schlesische Museum zu Görlitz, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris, the Museo Regionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Palermo and the Residenzschloss in Dresden. He runs a painting studio at the E. Geppert Academy of Fine Art and Design in Wrocław.