Effects

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W. Kandinsky, Improvisation 7, 1910

Green has a soothing and harmonizing effect due to its closeness to nature and therefore was the preffered color for living rooms and drawing rooms. The expressionistic painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), however, ignored green in his works. He deemed green a "limiting element" and the color of bourgeoisie based on its passive effect. Green is "similar to a fat and very healthy, motionless cow, capable but of ruminating and watching the world with its stupid and dull eyes". (Kandinsky 1952)

Further comments by W. Kandinsky:

A well balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colours green is the "burgeoisie" - self satisfied, immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring.

Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented by the placid, middle tones of a violin.

Positive healing effects of the color green for the body and the soul were already recognized by Hildegard von Bingen, a famous medieval healer. Even today we use to go for a walk in the woods to calm down and relax. Blackboards in modern schools and pool tables are green because this color has pleasant effect on our eyes and contrasts nicely with other colors so we can concentrate on the essential.

Green is the color of free passage in road traffic. Advertising associates green with ecological products.

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