Martin Minde

Colour People Interview

Martin Minde, Colour Art

Martin Minde (born 1940 in Königsberg) first worked as a painter and restorer after his school years. He completed his subsequent studies in fine arts as a master student. Since 1973 he has been working as a freelance artist and gives numerous lectures at home and abroad.

Er hat eine eigene „Farbformlehre“ entwickelt, ein riesiges Werk der Gleichabständigkeit der Farbnuancen, aus dem eindrucksvolle Werke hervorgehen. Viele sind als Computergrafiken angelegt – hierbei werden zur Farbvariation nicht die üblichen Algorithmen angewendet, sondern eigene Regeln, die Minde auch programmiert hat. Andere Werke legt Minde in Öl an.

Minde lives in Munich.

„Ich warf irgendwelche Farben bunt verstreut auf die Leinwand und ordnete sie dann auf die Fläche hin. Es entstanden Bilder scheinbar beliebiger Figürlichkeit und Farbigkeit, aber bruchlos ebener Flächigkeit, was zu suggestiver Farbwirkung führte. Farbe fand ihre Form. Das führte mich zur Erkenntnis, dass in der FARBFORM der Ursprung aller Darstellungsinhalte liege und zur Suche, ihn in anderen farbformalen Schemen weiter zu ergründen.“ Ölbild, 1973

Questions for Martin Minde

Mr Minde, what excites you so much about colour, what drives you?

If, after forty years of almost exclusive occupation with colour, one can still discover something essentially new, it must simply amaze one, indeed lead one to wonder at all that the Creator has placed in our sense of sight.

What formative experience do you associate with colour?

Of decisive importance for my choice of profession was my encounter with Vincent Van Gogh via - I have to laugh when I think about it - an art postcard of one of his self-portraits, about which I wrote a description of the picture as homework, and when I finished it, the spark flew.

Dass ich dann später das Glück hatte, Reimer Jochims und Meyer-Speer zu meinen Lehrern haben zu dürfen, ebnete dann den Weg zur Realisation. Zu meinem hoch geschätzten Initialzünder wurde Reimer Jochims übrigens, als er mich mit den zornigen Worten, ich sei „dumm“ hinauswarf, als ich ihm nach dem Studium erste, wie ich meinte, bedeutsame Bilder, zeigte. Nein, so wollte er mir wohl zu verstehen geben, ich brauchte keine Belobigung einer Autoritätsperson, sondern konnte auf eigenen Füßen gehen lernen.

What is your favourite colour and why?

My favourite colour is the designed one. I associate it with the unity of form and colour in which all visual phenomena are based and acquire their human meaning, especially those that are new to me and for which I am constantly on the lookout.

Unity of form and colour - how is that to be understood?

Die Einheit von Farbe und Form wurde mir im Zusammenhang der Bildung von Farbbewegungen klar, die ich in Harzölfarben ausführte: ein und dieselbe Bewegung von Weiß nach Schwarz über neutrale Zwischentöne war auf zweierlei Weise zu realisieren. Entweder man arbeitete mit einer gleichabständigen Stufung von Farben in kleiner werdenden Flächenabständen, die man dann ineinander „vertrieb“, oder man trug in eine Folge gleich breiter Flächenstreifen Farben kontinuierlich größer werdender Helligkeitsunterschiede ein. Da ich mit vorgemischten Tönen arbeiten wollte, die sich in gleicher Weise eigneten, sowohl zum Dunklen wie zum Hellen hin beschleunigte Bewegungen zu gestalten, wählte ich die erste Methode.

This targeted modulability of colour levels in their compositional mobility is at the same time the cause of a uniformity of colour-body orders demanded by all systematists.

The cubic shape as one of the colour-formal forms of expression. Computer graphics, 2001

Before I came to form a consistently equidistant system of colour order, I discovered that colours thrown onto the surface at will could be brought into the form of juxtaposition in the picture plane by the way they were connected to each other in special movements. This was only possible because two-dimensional forms with formal relations between the colours (smaller/greater colour distances) could be inseparably brought together in a specific spatial order.

It was surprising to me at the time that a representational content was also convincingly formulated in this way, namely a polychromaticity in which tones of different saturation and brightness appeared in equal harmony on the picture surface.

How did you define the corner points of the homogeneous colour space, how do you define counter-colours, equidistance, colour circle?

As far as equidistance is concerned, it has always been claimed that it cannot be used as a universal principle of colour order. Munsell, for example, orders brightness and chroma according to uniformity in straight steps, but tonal uniformity in a circular order around the neutral axis. In this way, however, he loses the possibility of representing straight connections between colour movements that do not intersect the grey axis in uniformity. This obvious deficiency can be remedied by carrying out the gradations on the brightness-equal planes in two dimensions.

So the principle of the colour wheel is to be abandoned?

Not really. Rather, it is raised to a more general level. Even with dimensional order structure, there are equally spaced surrounding neighbouring colours, but now not only around the neutral axis, but around any colour tone in the colour space. And instead of the straight alignment of evenly structured colour movements only through the neutral axis, there are now those criss-crossing in all directions of the colour space.

„Diesem Bild liegt eine Mischsystematik zugrunde, die Rundordnung mit tonaler verbindet. Ein figürliches Motiv, das an einen Vogel erinnert, wird auf vielfältige Weise farbig abgewandelt und mit sich selbst in Beziehung gebracht. Es entsteht ein farbräumlich vielschichtiges Gewebe mit poetischem Charme.“ Computergrafik, 2008

And counter colours?

Not only do contrasts that are diametrically opposite to each other with respect to the grey axis form counter colours, but all colours that can be connected to each other via intermediate colours are diametrically opposite colours with respect to their mean value.

How can such a system be realised in practice?

The best working tool for this is our eye. It is capable of recognising both uniformity and alignment of colours with enormous precision.

The simple composition of two adjacent fields in neighbouring colours, whose mean value is entered in small windows in these fields, is suitable as a design scheme for the construction of the homogeneous colour space. They then appear like the swapped surrounding fields, provided that they average between the surrounding colours in an exactly straight path.

Das einfache Schema zur Gestaltung gerader Farbstufungen wird zu einem feldlichen Schema erweitert, in dem vier Farben gleichen Abstandes zu einander in ein Viereck aus Flächen mit Fensterchen gesetzt werden, deren Farbwerte kreuzweise wie die vertauschten Umfelder erscheinen, wenn sie die Mittelfarbe aller vier Farben enthalten. Aus solchen Bausteinen ist ein Farbraum mit überall einheitlicher, „homogener“ Struktur zu bilden.

When I first tried to realise it, I did not yet know whether this was actually possible. In the meantime, my attempts have convinced me that not only I am capable of it, but that it is inherent as a potency in human beings: Yes, we can!

Do you have a photo of your studio?

Unfortunately, I cannot send you a photo of the studio. I even painted my large oil paintings in our flat, which was densely filled with works. Once a delicately painted picture of the cross, which I couldn't quite get past to move to the other room and which was already half dry, fell over, leaving it with a scar that couldn't be repaired, but it was still so beautiful that the Protestant church later bought it for a bishop. You don't have to despair immediately if something goes wrong - it happens again and again. It can also be done with a few stains on the waistcoat live.

Thank you very much for this interview, Mr Minde.

The questions were asked by Holger Everding.

Further information

...can be found at http://www.farbkunst-minde.de.