FAMOUS ACRYLIC PAINTINGS AND ARTISTS
Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol used acrylic paint to create more vivid compositions. Lichtenstein’s oil and acrylic canvas paintings “Little Big Painting” (1965) and “Hopeless” (1963) and Warhol’s acrylic flower paintings series “Flowers” (1964) demonstrate the pigment’s versatility.
Both artists' acrylic art paintings combined it with other media, including oil paint, pencil, and silkscreen ink. Warhol is also well known for his acrylic masterpiece “Marilyn Diptych” (1962). Tom Wesselmann similarly combined acrylic with cardboard to create his kitschy still lifes like “Still Life #28” (1963).
Famous abstract acrylic painters include Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Nolan, and Morris Louis. Louis was a pioneer in using Magna brand acrylic paint for his colorful paintings such as ““Alpha-Pi” (1960) and “Beta-Lambda” (1961). Other artists who worked with acrylic paint include David Hockney, Robert Motherwell, Larry Poons, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Helen Frankenthaler, Bridget Riley, James Rosenquist, and John Baldessari.
Modern acrylic painters, including some or Saatchi's more popular artists, often use Tumblr and Pinterest to expose more people to their acrylic works.
ACRYLIC ART TECHNIQUES
Acrylic artists have formed a plethora of techniques for the versatile medium. Acrylic artists who created paintings in the abstract expressionist, pop, and photorealist styles often relied on the new medium’s ability to create sharp lines and flat images. By adding different amounts of water to the paint, artists are able to create various consistencies approaching the transparent quality of watercolors on one hand and thick opaque shades on the other.
Similarly, sand and other small foreign objects can be mixed to achieve a range of textures and thicknesses. As with oil painting, acrylic canvas paintings can also be layered with thick squeezes of paint in a traditional impasto style.
Some Surrealist painters even scraped wet acrylic paint off their canvases in a technique known as grattage. Acrylic’s versatility inspired many artists to mix several media, including oil paint, pencil, and silkscreen ink, on a variety of surfaces ranging from paper to linen.
ACRYLIC PAINTING HISTORY
The formation of the commercial acrylic paint we think of today spanned over several decades. In the early 1900s, the German chemist Otto Rohm experimented with an acrylic compound and patented its use as a paint binder in industrial paints, lacquers, and oils.
In the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, painters began to experiment with the new medium to create large-scale acrylic paintings. Works Progress Administration mural artists worked with these synthetic pigments, and Mexican muralist David Siqueiros even held a workshop to teach other artists, Jackson Pollock among them, how to use the paint.
By the 1940s, mineral-based acrylic paint was packaged and commercially sold under the brand Magna. In the 1950s, oil paint was still the reigning, centuries-old medium for fine artists, and, as expected, many were still skeptical about the newly-invented paint.
In time, and as formulas improved, many artists appreciated how non-toxic acrylics offered faster drying time and the ability to mimic both richly pigmented, glossy oils and sheer watercolors through the use of various media and varnishes. As formulas and techniques changed, acrylic paints became a favorite among artists in the abstract expressionist, pop, and photorealist movements.