Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi

Both Bonnard and Mahdavi made every day banal things into things of beauty. Mahdavi is described as the master at transforming something ordinary into something extraordinary and Pierre Bonnard captured everyday domestic scenes in the brilliance of colour.

The colour palettes selected for this exhibition came from India Mahdavi’s private collection but were chosen to acknowledge the domestic scenes and landscapes that Bonnard loved and painted. After receiving physical samples from her team, these colours were matched using the Dulux World of Colour Atlas to get the colours as close as possible. As the audience moves through the 11 thematics of the exhibition, they arrive at a room that is warm, textured and upholstered almost entirely in burlap, which was complemented by the warm, yellowish brown of Dulux Smooth Beech. Following this, the deep mauve colour of Dulux Befitting was used to create a point of contrast and sets the transition of sonography from the previous space into a more domestic setting. The paint colour was also lowered to create a continuous datum line and lower the sense of scale so that audiences felt like they were in a home rather than a gallery.