20th century artists' oil paints : a chemical-physical survey

The research project developes in PhD research in Chemical Sciences deals with the study of modern and contemporary works of art, focusing on materials and production techniques employed by artists. In this study innovative and specific analytical techniques have been optimised: the survey has been successful not only in detecting the nature of artistic materials used in the 20th century, but also in studying their behaviours over time. Thid PhD researc has been part of an international project concerning the Conservation of Contemporary Art and has lead to the improvement of new methodologies to study proteinaceous and lipidic binding media by using chromatographic techniques (GC-MS, Py-GC-MS, HPLC). These methods have also allowed for the identification and the role of industrial additives (such as aluminium and zinc stearates and hydrogenated castor oil), which had been not fully studied previously. This part of the PhD research has been developed in the Netherlands, in the laboratories of the ICN (The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, Amsterdam), under the supervision of Dr. Klaas Jan van den Berg and Mr. Ing. Henk van Keulen. The research has been part of the international project called "20th Century Oil Paint Project", carried out at ICN in collaboration with Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Tate, London and Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles. The research was initially focused on the study of laboratory-reconstructed oil films, which were prepared with lipidic binders, additives, pigments and driers used by modern oil manufacturers. The films were studied by using several analytical techniques: FT-IR, XRF, TG-DSC and GC-MS. This study has lead to an improvement of analytical methodologies for the study of manufactured oil samples. Furthermore, the research focused on real samples taken from important modern paintings by Lucio Fontana, Jasper Johns, Karel Appel, Willem de Kooning, Salvador Dalì, Henri Matisse, Isabel Lambert-Rawsthorne, Ethel Walker, etc. The obtained results are a further step in the knowledge of materials used in artistic and technological production in Contemporary Art.