Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The application of thick layers of pigment to a canvas or other surface in painting.
- n. The paint so applied.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In painting, the thick laying on of pigments. Compare impaste, 2.
- n. In ceramics, enamel colors or slip laid so thickly on the ware, in decoration, as to stand out from its surface in relief.
Wiktionary
- n. In painting, the use of a thick-bodied paint to create sizable peaks and crests in an image.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Paint.) The thickness of the layer or body of pigment applied by the painter to his canvas with especial reference to the juxtaposition of different colors and tints in forming a harmonious whole.
WordNet 3.0
- n. painting that applies the pigment thickly so that brush or palette knife marks are visible
Etymologies
- Italian, from impastare, to make into a paste : in-, in (from Latin; see in-2) + pasta, paste (from Late Latin; see paste1). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In this painting as in most of my oil paintings, I used bold colors and brushstrokes of thick paint called impasto, to create a textural rhythm in order to introduce a more intense feeling in the work.”
“He will learn the secret of that transparency, of that sumptuous richness of impasto, which is in itself a delight to the eye.”
“Seeing him eye a Picasso, Rockefeller took the man's hand and placed it on the impasto.”
“He painted it in deep impasto—where paint is laid on thickly—and did so repeatedly.”
The Wall Street Journal: Painter's 'Naked Portraits' Depicted Friends, Relatives
“I'm showing resin and wax pieces, which are impasto paintings with a gloss of thick resin in between the brush strokes.”
“The heavy impasto is an intriguing contrast to the skeletal figures she paints.”
The Huffington Post: Tracey Harnish: Courtney Reid at Bleicher Gallery La Brea
“Contributions of urban imagery by the likes of George Shaw and Cornelia Parker bring the story up to date, but it's the old hands who make magic out of the mundane, with Frank Auerbach's Euston Steps a coagulated mass of painterly impasto and the local all-time master LS Lowry represented by a gem of a painting, depicting a park surrounded like a cultural oasis by the looming chimneys of factories.”
“He avoids the gestural brushstroke, impasto—anything, indeed, that might draw attention to the fact that these pictures are paintings.”
“In its antihumanism and in its thick impasto, with slices and diagonal blades of dark color making sharp edges à la Clyfford Still, this picture looks forward as well as backward.”
“Visual conundrums are built up with painstaking precision by Alice and Joe Woodhouse, and the tendency towards a systematic thoroughness of approach is taken one step further, as Jane Millican makes super-realist drawings from every impasto gesture of abstract paintings.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘impasto’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Fauvism
Words to describe art of the fauvist movement
wild, beast, color, fauve, fauvism, fauvist, avant garde, floating, violent, outrageous, radical, dynamite and 82 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, I
irenic, inimical, ignotism, infrangible, internecine, illumine, ingot, imposter, iconoclast, indefeasible, indefatigable, impingement and 184 more...
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favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 546 more...
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Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
discovered while reading this book.
tendril, spiraea, political asylum, bristly, sordid, reel, garish, dulcitude, gait, charlatan, lapel, august and 96 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 1991 more...
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Art Terms
mannerism, nonrepresentational, pointillism, serigraph, alla prima, trompe l'oeil, assemblage, arabesque, polychromatic, naive art, lumina, impasto and 104 more...
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to be sorted
litter, palanquin, aver, catamite, phlox, pliant, modicum, poorthink, cow, decalogue, caveat, dais and 175 more...
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Gravity's Rainbow
naphtha, cockades, globular, wastrels, mullioned, masionette, epicurean, impasto, pendulous, contrail, miasmata, kreplach and 5 more...
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TAAKC
Chabon words
contrivance, fokker, selvage, indolence, prestidigitated, omniveillant, penury, misapprehension, lachrymose, redoubt, acromegaly, divan and 84 more...
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words about art
descriptions of art, art techniques, art forms.
diptych, fresco, mural, pigment, collage, gouache, easel, palette, trompe l'oeil, impasto, chiaroscuro, panorama and 6 more...
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artsy words
words to describe and discuss the visual world
Tweets
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