Primer materials and pigments in A. A. Myl’nikov’s paintings: chronology and significance for expertise

The new wave of collecting artworks of both unofficial and Soviet socialist realism has largely contributed to the emergence of a market for fake art. A. A. Myl’nikov (1919–2012) is one of the artists, whose work falsification is an extremely urgent problem. The article presents the results of a study of artistic materials’ composition of twenty-one works by the artist, painted in the period from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s. The technological study showed how the artistic palette of the master varied during this period and allowed to establish the time of appearance of such pigments as titanium white, phthalocyanine pigments, Pigment Green B, etc. The composition of the primer is also a notable technological feature of the artist’s work: most of the paintings on canvas had a primer based on polyvinyl acetate emulsion (PVA) and a mixture of zinc white and calcium carbonate (chalk/calcite). The results obtained can be used in the study of artist’s paintings.