What is Impasto? A Guide to the Impasto Painting Technique

Impasto is a popular painting technique usually employed with oil and acrylic paint. Artists use thick brushstrokes to imitate texture or create three-dimensional, almost sculptural effects in their works. Impasto became widely used during the European Renaissance by masters like Rubens and Vermeer. It became extremely popular in the modern era among Expressionist artists with their radical brushwork. Read on to learn more about the impasto technique of painting.

Impasto is a popular painting technique that involves using unusually thick layers of paint that come out of the canvas. In this case, visible brushwork becomes another expressive means for an artist. The technique became popular in the Renaissance era after oil paint became widely available and popular among Western painters. Paint layers can be applied either with a brush or with a palette knife. The latter, popular among contemporary artists, creates bold and expressive brushstrokes that are almost sculptural. The most suitable medium for the impasto technique is oil paint, as it allows you to build up layers that slowly dry. Acrylic paint or gouache also work well with impasto, yet both tend to significantly lose volume while drying.

Impasto adds volume and depth to the work and can highlight specific areas of a painting. For instance, Rembrandt used impasto to create a three-dimensional effect of wrinkled skin or flickering jewelry. The natural volume of paint replaced the artificially painted play of light and shadow in such elements. Some artists mixed their paint with substances like sand, earth, or sawdust to achieve dramatic texture and unusual thickness. Such experiments became popular among modern artists in the latter half of the 20th century.

Conserving Impasto Paintings

Moreover, the textured surface of impasto painting collects dust and dirt that is difficult to remove without damaging the paint layer. The mass of layered paint is heavy and can stretch the canvas or even peel off the base. To restore and preserve it, art conservators use special techniques to reinforce the canvas from the back, allowing it to carry more weight. Cracks are usually covered with easily removable paint mixtures that cover the crack and bind the remaining pieces together, preventing further damage. One of the main objectives of contemporary restoration is that every action should be reversible. For that reason, any additions made by conservators can be easily removed without endangering the artwork.

Art historians first noticed the technique of impasto in the works of Venetian Renaissance masters like Tintoretto and Titian. Before the Renaissance era, the preferable artistic medium was tempera—an egg-based solution applied in thin layers. Tempera could not be mixed or layered properly since it dried almost instantly. Oil paint, on the other hand, gave the artist time and allowed for manipulation. Creating a proper impasto required specific knowledge from the artist. For instance, Rembrandt had his own recipe for thick application of paint, with particular proportions of oil, pigment, and additions. Johannes Vermeer used the impasto technique to render the texture of fabrics, bread crusts, and facial features of his characters.

Impressionism

Impressionist painters eagerly employed impasto in their works to manipulate the textures and depth of the image. Moreover, impasto allows for rich colors and nuanced tones, as artists can blend significant quantities of paint right on the canvas. Impressionist obsession with the fleeting play of light could be rendered through thick highlights and tonal variety, achieved with the impasto technique. Even though contemporary critics mostly considered Impressionist works messy, painting with impasto actually required precision and a clear understanding of one’s subjects. Claude Monet’s bold and decisive brushstrokes allowed him to capture the movement of water and transformations of light in a way that would be impossible for small and thin lines.

Vincent van Gogh’s Impasto

The paintings by Vincent van Gogh are among the most well-known examples of the use of the impasto technique. His textured brushstrokes are clearly noticeable, especially in one of his most famous paintings The Starry Night from 1889. There, spiral-shaped swirls of paint turned out to be remarkably similar to a state of turbulence, when differences in temperature and atmospheric pressure create vortices in the air. However, scientists would discover turbulence patterns only decades after Van Gogh’s death. Today, most historians believe he based his painting on an illustration of a falling comet that was popular in his time.

Vincent van Gogh was famous for his messy use of paint and thick layers. He often applied paint straight from tubes, without pre-mixing it on a palette, and spread it with his fingers instead of a brush. To paint specifically thin lines and small details, he sometimes licked his brushes, ingesting paint. This fact might have contributed to his rapidly deteriorating mental health and delusions that ended with his suicide in 1890.

Most artists traditionally were concerned with creating realistic images that corresponded to reality. However, in the 20th century, painters and art critics started to value painting as a separate object with its own physical properties rather than simply a snapshot of reality. This idea gave rise to more radical painting techniques and their applications.

Bold and radical impasto became exceptionally popular with the artists of the Expressionist movement and those inspired by it. Impasto brushwork allowed for a louder and more radical expression, reflecting the inner state of the artist. Apart from applying thick layers of paint, Expressionist painters often scratched it with the reverse sides of their brushes or palette knives or scraped segments of it.

One of the artists who employed this technique was Frank Auerbach, a German-British painter and one of the most influential members of the School of London group. Auerbach’s preferred manner of work was to paint his subject with a thick layer of paint, scrape off the image, and then start again on the following day. According to studio visitors, Auerbach’s works were often as thick as a generous slice of bread since he kept painting and scraping day after day until he was sure he properly understood the object or the scene he was working on.

Among Abstract Expressionists, the impasto technique was particularly popular since the movement focused on exploring expressive qualities of colors, brushstrokes, gestures, and movements rather than particular subject matter or objective reality. The term gesture painting, a free, expressive, and dynamic way of applying paint, was coined by art historians attempting to describe the art of Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, and others. Artists were not painting with their hands only; they used their entire bodies and moved freely around the canvas. The famous 1949 photoshoot of Jackson Pollock for Life magazine showed the famous artist almost dancing over his canvas.

As we discussed earlier, impasto was a popular technique for Abstract Expressionists and was hardly surprising for those familiar with the movement. However, certain artists managed to push the boundaries of the mastered technique. For instance, Jay DeFeo’s use of impasto questioned the distinction between painting and sculpture. From 1958 to 1966, DeFeo created perhaps her most influential work, titled The Rose. Bringing the impasto technique to its extreme, she layered paint and chiseled it away, creating a monumental composition with an overall weight of more than a ton. To keep the canvas from collapsing, DeFeo had to reinforce it with fabric and wood. The weight and fragile texture of the painting made it difficult to conserve and restore, and for decades, the work was hidden in the SFMoMA art depository. DeFeo turned impasto from a painting technique into an additive sculpting process, further developing the technique’s expressive potential.