Cave painting

movement c. 40,000-8000 BC Europe Southeast Asia

Cave painting is humanity's oldest surviving art, made from at least forty thousand years ago into the later Stone Age in caves from Europe to Sulawesi and Patagonia. Artists ground ochre, manganese and charcoal, applied it with fingers, brushes and blown pigment, and filled cave walls with animals in motion and stencilled handprints, often deep underground in chambers that show no sign of habitation. Some sites were used repeatedly across millennia, so images of different epochs layer over one another. The best known - Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, and Argentina's Cave of the Hands - display technical mastery and acute animal observation, and the tradition continued in Australia and elsewhere long after the European caves were sealed.

Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos upon Río Pinturas , near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province , Argentina . Picture taken by me
Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos upon Río Pinturas , near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province , Argentina . Picture taken by mePublic domain (credit: Mariano) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Animals painted in motion with confident, descriptive outlines
  • Earth pigments - ochre, manganese, charcoal - applied by brush, finger, or blown spray
  • Stencilled negative handprints along cave walls
  • Natural rock contours exploited to give bodies volume and movement
  • Images placed deep underground in non-habitation chambers

Example works

  • Cave paintings of Lascaux — Unknown (c. 17,000 BC)
  • Cave paintings of Altamira — Unknown (c. 14,000 BC)

Sources

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