BEHIND THE BRAND:
LASCAUX

THE SPIRIT OF COLOURS® Lascaux was founded in Switzerland by Alois K. Diethelm in 1963. He had been an apprentice paintmaker since the 1930s and became fascinated with the art materials he was working with.

His contact with artists and designers during this formative period led him in the late 1950s to begin to develop a water-based paint that offered the qualities of traditional oil and tempera paints. This resulted in Europe’s first artists’ quality acrylic paint and it was with this breakthrough that the company Lascaux was born.

Since then, Lascaux have gone on to forge a reputation for innovation, expertise, and exceptional quality across their range of water-based paints that include gouache, watercolour, and state-of-the-art printmaking products. This has led Lascaux paints and mediums to be internationally recognised for their purity, colour depth, and durability. Trusted by professional art restorers, designers and artists, Lascaux colours are used for significant interior and exterior art and design projects. This includes two large murals for the Sony Building, New York by Dorothea Rockburne and the painted pillars of Tay Road Bridge, Dundee by local artists Fraser Gray and Martin McGuiness. Other notable artists who have put their faith in Lascaux products include Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt, and Michael Craig Martin. 

Alois’s daughter Barbara Diethelm, a practising painter, took over the business in the 1990s and continues to uphold Lascaux’s integral philosophy of premium quality and pioneering craftsmanship. She has introduced innovative products including the multisensory Resonance Gouache collection and the visionary five-colour Sirius Primary System. In 2004 she set up the charitable foundation Fondation Lascaux with her husband, the painter Werner Schmidt. The foundation explores a spiritual approach to art, life, and the cosmos with an ethos of restoring the balance between mankind and nature by promoting the importance of colours for a new consciousness.