A captivating journey across Europe to the Bay Area, from the 1500s to 2021, “Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present” is currently on exhibition at the Legion of Honor until Feb. 13, asking and answering questions of expression, creation and color.

Situated in the central gallery, before moving through the exhibition itself, are display cases with the mediums used by pastel artists — including soft pastels, pencil pastels, graphite and charcoal — along with the different tools used to manipulate their expression — including brushes, erasers, sponges — and even the pure, organic substances used to create their exquisite color. This display suggestively grounds the viewer in the artforms they are about to encounter.

The exhibit further foreshadows its patrons’ upcoming experience with an informational blurb on the simplicity and significance of pastels, explaining how “Pastel allows an artist to trace both color and line with a single application of the stick.” Accounting for both its popularity and its endurance over time, the possibilities for color and movement are therefore implied to be endless.

Beginning with the 16th century, the exhibition’s first room holds paintings from Rosalba Carriera and Carlo Caliari, among others, who mixed pastels with a wet vehicle to create soft complexions, which were then juxtaposed with more textured strokes. Notably, Carriera was not only the first woman to be admitted to the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, but she also was the first artist to soften her figures with “stumping,” achieved by dragging the flat side of the chalk lightly over a contrasting color to create a specific blending effect. The presence of women, as both subject and artist, is prominent throughout the gallery, but this first introduction to the form illustrates the obstacles faced by female artists.

Moving into the 19th century, the exhibition spotlighted pastel’s power over landscape with artwork from Jean-François Millet (among others), who applied the medium to a variety of more humble, domestic scenes. In contrast to the Renaissance’s use of pastels to create blended color and form, artists of this era played with rough textures and strokes, focusing on color rather than form. Additionally, the use of brown and blue paper is played with more expressively than in previous time periods, and incorporated into the pictures.

This room’s highlight of color and expression leads to the gallery’s impressionist collection, which the exhibit explains “was marked by a powerful resurgence for pastel across Europe and America,” distinguished by Édouard Manet, Eva Gonzalès, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt and Theodore Earl Butler, all of whom are on display. Degas’s “Dancers” encapsulates the era’s artistic vivacity and form, with ballet dancers grouped in various positions of rest. Degas splashes the painting with color and line, capturing the moment’s energy through a masterful combination of charcoal and pastel.

In the 20th century, there was a collective resurgence in the use of pastels, as artists strove for the freedom to simultaneously paint and draw. Easily the largest artwork of the entire exhibit, Enrique Chagoya’s powerful representation of the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor triumphed as a clear exhibition highlight, depicting a pair of shiny black shoes pressing down on blood-red feet beneath them. Another outstanding artwork was Morris Broderson’s erie composition of Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother in 1892. Other prominent artists include Diego Rivera, Robert Diebenkorn, Marsden Hartley and Joan Mitchell.

The exhibition culminates with “A Focus on California,” from 1950 to the present. This collection brings the California landscape and culture to life with environmental, political and Indigenous perspectives on display. Bright blues and yellows, along with an active engagement of white space, distinguish this collection as both cleverly modern and distinctly Californian.

The journey of color and form through time is saturated with historical and social significance, marking the Legion of Honor’s decision to highlight pastels as an art form as both brilliant and visually delightful. “Color into Line” brims with inspiration and exceptional talent, filled with a variety of techniques, subjects, and historical moments.