What is Impasto painting? – The Hindu

Every style of art has its own unique quality. Claude Monet is known for founding Impressionism, where the thin strokes used to create the painting are visible to the eye of the beholder. Then there’s Yves Klein, who is known for painting only with the colour blue. Paintings and artworks done with specific shapes and points, are two of many other examples for this.

Talking texture

Ever tried painting with acrylics or oil colours, but you accidentally leave the paint on the palette for too long and it dries up, getting stuck to the surface? Now imagine that same dried-up paint on a canvas. The one main characteristic that makes this style of painting so unique is the fact that one can identify it through touch.

No matter how distinct two different paintings seem, the texture would almost always be the same. Impasto paintings are done through the process of applying paint on the canvas very thickly with brushes or painting knives so that the strokes are visible and the colour bulges from the surface. This provides great, dramatic visual effects that give a new light of life to the artwork. To make the paint even thicker, some artists mix it with wax. This style doesn’t just involve applying paint after it’s prepared, but the paint can also be mixed right on the canvas!

Origin and first painters

When you hear the word ‘impasto’, what is the first word you’d connect with it? Pasta? Paste? Well, both answers are completely valid, because the term is derived from the Italian language word meaning ‘to paste’ or a ‘potting technique’. And the root noun of this word is ‘pasta,’ which is Italian for ‘paste’.

While Vincent van Gogh is considered to be a master of this technique, with many of his works, including ‘Starry Night,’ clearly displaying the depth of his brushstrokes and a strong emotion told through colours. However, the first known users of this type of art style were believed to be painters Titian and Tintoretto, whose artworks were rich in colour, life, with a strong tactile characteristic. Not only that, the freedom that is displayed within their loose brushstrokes provide a new form of magnificence within their artworks.

Why cross the borders of canvas?

This type of art style tends to focus more on the artworks, moving from the sense of sight to the sense of touch. But why do that? Why do some artists choose to literally break the barriers of a painting and move beyond the canvas, and shift from 2D to 3D? Well, there are many answers to that one question. But each of them circles back to one common value of thought: exploration. An author can never truly know the different futures a story can move towards. In the same way, when it comes to art, nothing is limited when there is creativity, imagination, and curiosity.

There is a chance the artists of the Italian Renaissance might have had this little bird of a question tweet inside their creative minds: “Why does the paint have to be thin and restricted to the surface of the canvas?” or to put it more simply, “What if people could touch art?” Not only did this art form provide a symbolic way of expression, but the thick strokes of the art help display and preserve the artists’ skill over time.