Extended Abstract - Cleaning issues for nine Francesc Artigau pop art paintings

Abstract

In the 1960s, Pop artist Francesc Artigau (born in Barcelona, 1940) painted a series of nine works on plywood panels using a traditional primer of commercial gouache, egg yolk, and color pencils. After more than 30 years of exposure to rubbish amidst an indeterminate number of dogs, the paintings show a deplorable state of conservation. The present study examines the treatment undertaken on the paint and ground layers, consisting mostly of cleaning, one of the key challenges of the project.