Matthias Schaller: Artists' palettes

Artists' palette

Delacroix - who had his own theories about colour - arranged his paints in neat chromatic variations along the curve of his palette. Yves Klein filled his ceramic plate with blue. Morandi's putty-coloured palette looks to have soaked up some of the sunshine that streamed into his studio in Bologna. When you see the pictures of artists' palettes by the German-born photographer Matthias Schaller, it is impossible not to try to link them to the artists' works, and very often the similarities are striking.

It was in 2007 during a visit to Cy Twombly's studio in Gaeta, in central Italy, that Schaller noticed an old palette of Twombly's from the 1980s and realised how much it resembled his paintings from that time. "Twombly was an accident," he says, speaking from Venice, where he works, "but the second one I saw was Miro, and it confirmed the idea. Then I thought: OK, now I start."

Since then he has photographed the palettes of more than 70 European artists, discovering them in museum archives and private collections with the help of art historians and curators (notably Nicholas Penny, the outgoing director of the National Gallery), artists' families and friends.

Next month, some of the photographs will be exhibited in the Refectory on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. At almost two metres high, each palette is presented as an abstract work in its own right.

"When an artist has a palette in his hand, it is like an extension of his body," Schaller says, "and so, metaphorically, I sever that relationship and make it an independent object. At the large size, you don't see the object any more. You just see the painting, and you're really in it then.

"The intimacy of the palette is what fascinates me," he says. "It is a kind of 'unconscious'; an uncontrolled area from which the artist goes on to realise the controlled area - his painting. You can feel the process of creation."

Matthias Schaller, 'Das Meisterstuck', Refectory, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, May 8-June 7, matthiasschaller.com

Photographs: copyright Matthias Schaller

Courtesy of: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin; Musee National Eugene Delacroix, Paris; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; Yves Klein Archives, Paris; Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro, Palma; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; Casa Giorgio Morandi, Bologna; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Collezione Nicola Del Roscio, Gaeta; Musee d'Orsay, Paris

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