(Phys.org) —Pablo Picasso is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, having pioneered a variety of new styles in painting, sculpture, and other artistic forms. Besides introducing avant-garde art styles, he also innovated in the use of non-traditional materials. For example, a widely-held view has been that Picasso employed the ordinary house paint Ripolin in place of conventional artists' paints in some of his artwork. Over the years art historians have used different approaches in an attempt to determine which of Picasso's paintings incorporate Ripolin. This task is not as straightforward as one might suppose, because many of the ingredients in Ripolin were also present in the artists' paints used by Picasso. A recent collaborative effort between Art Institute of Chicago A.W. Mellon Conservation Scientist Francesca Casadio, and Advanced Photon Source (APS) and Argonne National Laboratory physicist Volker Rose has demonstrated conclusively that pigment from one of Picasso's paintings is, indeed, derived from the Ripolin-brand house paint of that era.
↧