Selective cracks: Mapping damage from pigment-medium interaction in three neo-plastic oil paintings

In this paper, three early 20th-century neoplasticist paintings from the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) are discussed: Proportions (1934), by Franti?ek Kupka; Composition No. 83 (1934), by Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart; and Composition dans le cône avec couleur orange (1929), by Georges Vantongerloo. They share the use of the basic elements of painting (color, line) in their purest state: plain primary colors used to create geometric shapes that result from the intersections of horizontal and vertical lines. However, in all three artworks, multiband imaging revealed selective cracking in specific colored areas, which suggested that the responsible failure mechanisms were related to the intrinsic nature of the pigments, and not necessarily to the environment, and may thus be recurrent over time