The great artist Pablo Picasso once visited the Altamira Cave in northern Spain. After examining the drawings on its walls, he exclaimed: "After work in Altamira, all art began to decline." Indeed, rock paintings that came from primitive times belong to the greatest works of the world of fine art.
Technique for performing rock paintings
The first drawings were done in the simplest way - they were applied with fingers, branches or bones on the soft surface of the clay. Straight or wavy parallel lines were drawn on the walls of the caves. Modern researchers call them "pasta". The most ancient images include prints of a human hand with widely spaced fingers, outlined with a contour.
To make monumental images on a rocky surface, the artist used large stone chisels. Later, the contours began to be worked out more subtly. Sometimes in rock art you can find a combined technique of painting and engraving.
Some details of the images are shaded with paints. Most often, primitive artists used mineral dyes in yellow, red, brown and white. The black color was obtained using charcoal.
The most widespread subject of rock carvings was lonely standing images of large animals: bison, bison, horses, deer and rhinos. As a rule, they were considered patrons of the tribe and, at the same time, objects of hunting, providing a person with food and clothing. Often such drawings were made in full size, demonstrating the artist's excellent knowledge of the features of the structure of the animal's body.
Primitive artists did not yet know the laws of perspective and did not respect the proportions between the size of various animals. They depicted bison and mammoths of the same size as lions and mountain goats. Often the images were superimposed on each other. At the same time, the primitive drawings perfectly conveyed the volume of animals. The emotional impression was enhanced by the use of a wide palette of colors.
Altamira and Lasko - the largest collections of rock carvings
In 1868, the Altamira Cave was discovered in Spain. Almost 10 years later, the Spanish archaeologist Marcelino Sautuola discovered primitive images on the walls and ceiling of the cave. There were depicted about 20 buffalo, wild boars and horses.
Much later, in September 1940, near the town of Montignac in southwestern France, four schoolchildren accidentally discovered the Lascaux Cave. It contains many very realistic images of horses, bison, bison, deer and rams. For a long time, the cave was open to tourists and was considered the largest museum of primitive art. However, due to frequent visits, the images began to deteriorate, and the cave had to be closed.
Nevertheless, the rock carvings found in Altamira, Lascaux and many other caves located in different parts of the earth became widely known and became a kind of greetings that came to us from the distant prehistoric past.
