Today let’s talk about an Italian art term
that my sister hilariously calls impasta:
let’s talk about impasto!
Hey guys, it’s Karin, Welcome back to Little
Art Talks.
Impasto, meaning in paste, is thickly applied
paint.
Unlike sfumato, where paint is applied very
thinly with invisible brushstrokes, impasto
has texture created from the thick application
of paint, and shows visible brushstrokes or
cuts of the palette knife.
The easiest way to tell if a painting has
impasto or not, is to just stand to the side,
and view the painting in profile.
If you see the canvas with some paint sticking
off of it, then you know there are areas of
impasto in the painting.
Impasto was first noticeable in the paintings
of Venetian Renaissance artists Titian and
Tintoretto.
Baroque masters like Rubens, Rembrandt, and
Velázquez used impasto to catch light from
the surrounding room and cast a small shadow
on the painting, heightening the chiaroscuro
of the image for a more dramatic lighting
effect.
They would rendered highlights in metal jewelry
and armor with thicker paint so that they
would shine even brighter.
It became increasingly notable in nineteenth-century
landscape, naturalist and romantic painting.
The use of impasto became very popular among
modern artists as the idea that the surface
of a painting should have its own reality
rather than just being a smooth window into
an illusionist world beyond.
The paint of the painting itself becomes the
work of art, as opposed to just the means
of creating an illusionistic world beyond.
With this went the idea that the texture of
paint and the shape of the brushmark could
directly convey the artist’s emotions or
feeling on a particular subject.
The idea that the artist should place emphasis
on the innate qualities of their medium is
a central one in modern art, and is summarised
in the phrase ‘truth to materials’.
So, since you’re painting, you should be
able to tell it’s a painting.
It should look like painting.
In the mid-twentieth century, some artists
took impasto to the extreme, as seen in the
work of Frank Auerbach, Jean Dubuffet and
Leon Kossoff.
I hope this video helped you better understand
the meaning of impasto.
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