From Van Gogh’s sunflowers to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” there’s no shortage of seminal artwork that was made with a striking hue known as cadmium yellow.
But that riot of color that artists squeezed from their paint tubes isn’t necessarily what museum goers see today: cadmium yellow’s brilliance often diminishes over time, as the paint fades and turns chalky.
A team of art conservators and scientists recently analyzed bits of degraded cadmium yellow paint taken from pieces painted by the Spanish artist Joan Miró in the 1970s.
Cadmium yellow paint is an amalgam primarily of cadmium and sulfur.
Miró described the color as “splendid.” Tubes of cadmium yellow paint, including Cadmium Yellow Lemon No.1 produced by the Parisian manufacturer Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet, litter Miró’s two studios in Mallorca, Spain.
Persons:
Edvard Munch’s “, ”, Joan Miró, Miró, Lucien Lefebvre, Mar Gómez Lobón, Pilar, Joan Miro
Organizations:
Heritage, Mar
Locations:
Spanish, Mallorca, Spain