Pigments of Soviet Artists in the 1950s – Late 1970s

Abstract

Until recently, official Soviet art of the 1950s – late 1970s had garnered little interest, except for a limited number of specialists, while nowadays it is becoming increasingly popular. The particular feature of the Soviet palette is a restricted number of pigments compared to those available to contemporary European and North American artists. This is related to the Iron Curtain era, as the artists had access mainly to paints manufactured in the USSR. During this period, the Soviet paint industry was developing fast: factories not only produced well-known paints, but also invented new pigments. For example, cobalt blue spectral, a new pigment synthesized in 1956, was introduced as an oil paint pigment for the first time in the Soviet market. In this paper, a multi-analytical approach for a study of pigments used by Soviet artists in paintings dating from 1950s to late 1970s is reported. The results are juxtaposed with published data from archives and manufacturing practices. The goal of the research is to find out how often the new pigments were applied by artists in the period of the 1950s – late 1970s.