The Russian avant-garde painting palette--documentary and physicochemical study of inorganic colorants.

In the present article an attempt is being made to elucidate the inorganic colorants encountered in the Russian avant-garde painting palette by a combined art historical, documentary and physicochemical investigation; and to examine the influence of environmental factors on the chromatic profile originally sought by the artist. The overall approach based on written sources is confirmed by measurements on representative paintings from the Costakis Collection in the State Museum for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. The documentary research deals with the influences of Orthodox iconography, folkloric art, and occidental modernist tendencies on the Russian avant-garde palette; and is studying the effects of contradictory historical processes in the chromatic profile of individual paintings.