Identification of the type of paint, acrylic or vinyl, in works of two contemporary painters, Manuel Vilarinho and Pedro Cabrita Reis, by ATR-FTIR

Abstract

Many times, records of the materials used by contemporary artists in their first works are scarce. If the work under study has been carried out during the artist youth, sometimes artists just remember to have used synthetic materials but no longer have memory of its specific type. In the last decades of the 20th century, vinyl-based synthetic paints marketed as Sabu paints, were sold at affordable prices making them popular among the students of Fine Arts as substitutes of more expensive acrylic paints. Using the ATR-FTIR spectroscopic technique it was possible to unequivocally distinguish acrylic from vinyl paints in two early works from Manuel Vilarinho and Pedro Cabrita Reis, both belonging to the collection of the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. Samples from the first case painting presented the characteristic peaks of acrylic paints while those collected from the second case paint presented the characteristic peaks of Sabu paints.