Lecture: Nine Small Colour Stories, Päivi Hintsanen

Welcome on Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 PM to attend a lecture by visual artist and author Päivi Hintsanen: Nine Small Colour Stories.

Art history is filled with hundreds of pigments, each with its own story. In this lecture, nine of them will be highlighted. There is blue, simultaneously the most expensive and one of the cheapest pigments; red, created in alchemists’ laboratories in search of the philosopher’s stone; yellow made from urine and another resembling gold; one named after a gemstone and another an illusion of nothingness. Some pigments were so toxic they drove painters to the brink of madness, while others were used for medicinal purposes. There are misunderstandings and accidents that transformed the pigment industry. All the pigments discussed have at some point appeared on artists’ palettes, and some are still in use today.

Päivi Hintsanen is a visual artist, colour expert, and non-fiction author whose work moves between reality and dreams. She combines digital and analog collage techniques, studies natural pigments, and maintains the extensive colour-themed website Coloria.

The lecture will take place on-site at the Jyväskylä Art Museum; there will be no live stream. The lecture is in Finnish.
Duration: approximately 1.5 hours.

Admission with a ticket or Museum Card; free entry for under 24s. No pre-registration required.

This lecture is part of the events program for COLOUR – A Collection Exhibition of Central Finland’s Art. The COLOR exhibition runs at Jyväskylä Art Museum and Aalto2 Museum Center, at the Central Finland Museum’s Art Hall, from January 24 to April 26, 2026.