Liquitex, leading brand in acrylics and collaborator of # ArtMadrid18 launches a new range of cadmium-free colors with the same performance as acrylics with cadmium but safer for the artist and the environment. Do you join the challenge?

Liquitex cadmium free

Since its creation in 1955, Liquitex has partnered with artists to ensure constant evolution and innovation. As there is not a single opinion about the damage that can potentially be caused by cadmium pigments, Liquitex has chosen to offer both alternatives in parallel, so that artists can choose based on their personal preferences. ColArt, in constant search for safer formulations, (already they did it with the health and environmental implications of lead and stopped using white lead pigments in their formulations) it thus becomes the first brand in the market to launch an alternative to cadmium paints with a performance comparable to that of the original cadmium paints, and responds to the needs of artists who care more about health and enviroment safety issues.

Liquitex cadmium free

Throughout 3 years, a team of chemists has evaluated a range of pigments available to develop 7 new colors that respect our health and the environment: Light yellow, medium yellow, yellow dark, orange, light red, medium red and dark red, which offer the same resistance to light and vitality as classic cadmium paints and have the Approved Product Seal of the Art and Creative Materials Institute Institute (ACMI), that identifies safe art materials, that is, that the products that carry them have been evaluated by qualified toxicologists and labeled according to federal and state legislation.

Liquitex cadmium free

But, in addition to the toxicological test, it was essential to be tested by artists, the users. Liquitex identified regular users of acrylic paint and in particular of cadmium colors to carry out a series of tests (light resistance, longevity, pure tone of color, brightness, viscosity ...) Each artist received two sets of identical colors, one with genuine cadmium paints and one with cadmium-free paints. The tests were blind, without the artists knowing how one set of paintings differed from the other. They were given a month to work with both games and compare. They were also given a diary in which to write down observations during the evaluation period, as well as an exhaustive questionnaire at the end. None identified the fact that one of the two sets contained cadmium-free paints.

Liquitex wants artists to experience first-hand that the performance of alternative colors free of cadmium is truly comparable. Do you want to try this new CADMIUM FREE range? Do you want to receive one of its "blind tests"? Then enter the link and participate in the challenge: here

Liquitex cadmium free

The work of Cedric Le Corf (Bühl, Germany, 1985) is situated in a territory of friction, where the archaic impulse of the sacred coexists with a critical sensibility characteristic of contemporary times. His practice is grounded in an anthropological understanding of the origin of art as a foundational gesture: the trace, the mark, the need to inscribe life in the face of the awareness of death.

The artist establishes a complex dialogue with the Spanish Baroque tradition, not through stylistic mimicry, but through the emotional and material intensity that permeates that aesthetic. The theatricality of light, the embodiment of tragedy, and the hybridity of the spiritual and the carnal are translated in his work into a formal exploration, where underlying geometry and embedded matter generate perceptual tension.

In Le Corf’s practice, the threshold between abstraction and figuration is not an opposition but a site of displacement. Spatial construction and color function as emotional tools that destabilize the familiar. An open methodology permeates this process, in which planning coexists with a deliberate loss of control. This allows the work to emerge as a space of silence, withdrawal, and return, where the artist confronts his own interiority.

The Fall. 2025. Oil on canvas.195 × 150 cm.

In your work, a tension can be perceived between devotion and dissidence. How do you negotiate the boundary between the sacred and the profane?

In my work, I feel the need to return to rock art, to the images I carry with me. From the moment prehistoric humans became aware of death, they felt the need to leave a trace—marking a red hand on the cave wall using a stencil, a symbol of vital blood. Paleolithic man, a hunter-gatherer, experienced a mystical feeling in the presence of the animal—a form of spiritual magic and rituals linked to creation. In this way, the cave becomes sacred through the abstract representation of death and life, procreation, the Venus figures… Thus, art is born. In my interpretation, art is sacred by essence, because it reveals humankind as a creator.

Between Dog and Wolf II. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

Traces of the Spanish Baroque tradition can be seen in your work. What do you find in it that remains contemporary today?

Yes, elements of the Spanish Baroque tradition are present in my work. In the history of art, for example, I think of Arab-Andalusian mosaics, in which I find a geometry of forms that feels profoundly contemporary. In Spanish Baroque painting and sculpture, one recurring theme is tragedy: death and the sacred are intensely embodied, whether in religious or profane subjects, in artists such as Zurbarán, Ribera, El Greco, and also Velázquez. I am thinking, for example, of the remarkable equestrian painting of Isabel of France, with its geometry and nuanced portrait that illuminates the painting.

When I think about sculpture, the marvelous polychrome sculptures of Alonso Cano, Juan de Juni, or Pedro de Mena come to mind—works in which green eyes are inlaid, along with ivory teeth, horn fingernails, and eyelashes made of hair. All of this has undoubtedly influenced my sculptural practice, both in its morphological and equestrian dimensions. Personally, in my work I inlay porcelain elements into carved or painted wood.

Between Dog and Wolf I. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

What interests you about that threshold between the recognizable and the abstract?

For me, any representation in painting or sculpture is abstract. What imposes itself is the architectural construction of space, its secret geometry, and the emotion produced by color. It is, in a way, a displacement of the real in order to reach that sensation.

The Anatomical Angel. 2013. Ash wood and porcelain. 90 × 15 × 160 cm.

Your work seems to move between silence, abandonment, and return. What draws you toward these intermediate spaces?

I believe it is by renouncing the imitation of external truth, by refusing to copy it, that I reach truth—whether in painting or in sculpture. It is as if I were looking at myself within my own subject in order to better discover my secret, perhaps.

Justa. 2019. Polychrome oak wood. 240 × 190 × 140 cm.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

It is true that, on occasions, I completely forget the main idea behind my painting and sculpture. Although I begin a work with very clear ideas—preliminary drawings and sketches, preparatory engravings, and a well-defined intention—I realize that, sometimes, that initial idea gets lost. It is not an accident. In some cases, it has to do with technical difficulties, but nowadays I also accept starting from a very specific idea and, when faced with sculpture, wood, or ceramics, having to work in a different way. I accept that.