Goethe’s Colour Theory – Research Project
The colour issue: How can we understand colour not just through science, but through experience and image-making?
Colour Research | Colour Epistemologies | Colour Phenomenology | Experiential Knowledge
This research project, developed as part of my Master’s degree, focused on the intersection of colour theory, visual representation, and historical reception, using a design-based methodology. The aim was to explore how early 19th-century artists responded to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours), a work that proposed a radically different understanding of colour—one rooted in experience, phenomenology, and symbolic meaning rather than purely scientific abstraction.
Goethe aimed to shift the understanding of colour from abstract science to lived perception—inviting artists to experiment, observe, and generate knowledge through visual means. The project began with a core question: What elements of Goethe’s Theory of Colours prompted its early recipients, artists of the first half of the 19th century, to generate a response to this work in both schematic and pictorial images? This opened up an investigation into the Farbenlehre’s visual nature and its unique pedagogical structure, which used diagrams and models not just to explain colour but to invite observation and experimentation.
My role as main researcher involved analysing Goethe’s own colour models and comparing them with the chromatic diagrams and paintings created in response by artists such as Philipp Otto Runge, Matthias Klotz, and J.M.W. Turner. These case studies illustrated how colour knowledge was visually constructed, debated, and applied through design, philosophy, and artistic practice. I analysed these responses by combining historical and visual studies, treating colour diagrams as early forms of schematic thinking and educational tools. I investigated how colour was used not just to represent knowledge, but to provoke reflection, guide emotion, and shape meaning—ideas that are still relevant to how we use colour in design today.
My research was part of a FONDECYT Regular Nº1140587 project, and was funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), Chile.
Years: 2014 – 2015
Research Supervisors: Roberto Gustavo Rubio, Ana María Risco.
See more: Article in Journal Color Culture and Science Journal (2018); Article (Spanish) for Revista Diseña (2015); Conference Full Paper for AIC2013 (2013).
