Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 2. On the Visual Arts
General Remarks on the Visual Arts

Form and Colour

In order to get a significance through a picture there must be a definite form — form and colour are the essentials of painting and neither by itself is enough. Here [in a painting sent to Sri Aurobindo] there is colour but no form — or only a shapeless shape — as if you were trying to get rid of form and paint only forces or indefinite suggestions. But that is contrary to an art which depends on colour, line and design.