January is very grey and monochrome, and sometimes that can be beautiful. Reducing everything to black and white invites us to reflect and notice contrast, texture, and form without distraction.

Here are four striking artworks in greys and black and white.

Gerhard Richter is one of the most well-known and important painters of late 20th century Germany. At one point, his paintings set a sales record, making him the most expensive living painter. By the mid-1960s, he was painting ‘blurred photo-paintings’, based on press images and family snapshots.

This painting from 1968 is different in style to those paintings, but reminiscent of Richter’s later abstract paintings painted in grey. Richter has spoken about grey as the combination of colours red, yellow, and blue and, in 2004, said, ‘I think grey is an important colour, the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair’.

Lea Ignatius was a Finnish artist, born in 1913. She studied at the University of Helsinki in the 1930s, and later in Salzburg and Paris. She worked in many mediums, including prints. This print is from a series in the 1980s where she focused on quiet landscapes.

Soutaja is a hill in Finnish Lapland. This beautiful, peaceful print is on display in the Nordic Noir exhibition at the British Museum until March 2026.

This black-and-white photograph from the late 1920s is by British designer and photographer Cecil Beaton, who was then in his mid-20s. It shows his sister Nancy Beaton on the occasion of the Galaxy Ball held at the Park Lane Hotel in London. Cecil and Nancy were very much part of the 1920s’ Bright Young Things aristocratic and socialite set.

By this time, Cecil Beaton had a contract with Vogue Magazine. He would go on later to design the costumes for the musicals Gigi and My Fair Lady. This photograph, in the collection of the V&A Museum, was displayed in the National Portrait Gallery's recent exhibition about Cecil Beaton.

Juan Downey was a Chilean artist working in New York, where he moved in 1969. He was part of the Raindance collective of artists who were experimenting with new video technologies.

In freehand drawings, such as this abstract spiral and curve, Downey presents a vision that 'the universe is [...] an overlapping, interrelated system of energy'.

This Juan Downey drawing, entitled Meditation, was on display in an exhibition ‘An act of seeing that unfolds’, at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

Thank you for reading + until next time,