20th century artists’ oil paints: The case of the Olii by Lucio Fontana

Abstract

a b s t r a c tDuring the 20th century, many innovative binders have been rapidly introduced to the art world and soon became popular as artists' paints and pictorial media. However, despite the advantages that new synthetic materials presented, oil paints have never been entirely substituted. Indeed, this paper focuses on the results provided by the scientific analysis of a group works from the oeuvre of Lucio Fontana , all of which created between 1960 and 1964 using oil-based media, and aims to illustrate how oils contained in the pictorial media have influenced these works' respective ageing and degradation processes. Despite the apparent coherence in the behaviour of many of Fontana's creations, some artworks revealed discrepancies in terms of the physical and mechanical behaviour of the pictorial films and in alterations resulting from degradation processes. Samples taken from case studies belonging to the Olii and Fine di Dio series were analysed using optical microscopy, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), FourierTransform Infrared Spectroscopy in attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) and Gas ChromatographyMass Spectrometry (GC-MS) in order to study and identify the materials employed by the artist and the products of their degradation processes. These analyses gave unexpected but useful results (such as the presence of non-drying or slow-drying oils in the paint formulations) which not only provided us with new insight into the nature of the constituent materials, but also facilitated the elaboration of correct conservation measures and suitable restoration interventions.

Modern Oil Paints – Formulations, Organic Additives and Degradation: Some Case Studies

“…1 (Burnstock et al 2007;Mills et al 2008;Tempest et al 2013;Izzo et al 2013). The presence of the various additives in modern formulations is unlikely to be completed unrelated to these degradation phenomena, although other factors -such as the modification by artists of their paints -can also be a cause.…”

Study of the chemical composition and the mechanical behaviour of 20th century commercial artists' oil paints containing manganese-based pigments

“…In particular, the investigation of manufactured oil paints was essential to understand the vulnerability observed in several well-bound oil paints from unvarnished artworks [1][2][3][4][5]. Recent studies highlighted the possible correlations between the degradation phenomena exhibited by modern oil paintings and 20th century oil paint formulations, focusing in particular on the variety of vegetable oils used and the various organic additives typically introduced by paint manufacturers [6,7].…”

Synergistic use of Py–THM–GCMS, DTMS, and ESI–MS for the characterization of the organic fraction of modern enamel paints

“…Erucic acid (a monounsaturated C22 fatty acid) was detected at low levels in Ripolin samples HP087 (gris perle foncé), HP013 (bleu outremer), and HP089 (bleu turquoise). This compound is characteristic of Brassicaceae oils such as rapeseed [14], and has been observed in oil-based paints used by other 20th century artists such as Lucio Fontana [21,55]. It may indicate the presence of this type of oil in the paint formulation as an additive or adulterant.…”

“…Because of a growing interest in the formulations of 20th century oil paints [47], with the publication of several isolated studies of oil-based enamels of the period [1,7,16,21,45], the results of this systematic study of the composition of the most important French brand of the early 20th century and its correlation with data from contemporary Lefranc artists' tube paint samples represent an important benchmark.…”