For Barbara Diethelm, paint is embodied with spirit. The artist and second-generation owner of Lascaux, one of the worlds pioneering acrylic paint manufacturers, speaks with Studio Forum about uncompromising quality, making against the grain, feminine leadership, and a lifelong relationship with colour and material.
What sets Lascaux apart?
Lascaux is led by intention. Ours is really to bring out the truest and best material we are capable of creating. I don't want to say we don't make any compromises, we all have to compromise. That's part of being alive in this body. But we try to really be true to ourselves.
We have two or three people in the lab and we're hardly thirty people, so nearly 10% of our resources are in the lab. Paint isn't just a pigment and a binder and a resin—it's perhaps fifteen different ingredients interacting... you have to understand those interactions. We could probably save a lot of money and make much cheaper products. But that's not our purpose. Of course, we also have to make money. We have to buy materials and pay people. But money is a means to the end and not the end in itself. That's a big difference.
The quality of acrylic paints does not depend solely on the quality of the pigments; rather, it is the interaction of the individual components within each formulation that makes the decisive difference. The pigment is like the first violin in an orchestra. Numerous other components are added to create a harmonious composition. Everyone has to play their part — even if an individual element may not be as important as the first violin.
A crucial factor is the ability to guarantee consistently high quality. If an ingredient used in a tried-and-tested formulation is no longer available, the laboratory may test hundreds of alternatives in order to find a suitable replacement.
At the company’s headquarters, 30 employees ensure that these high standards are carefully maintained. In Brüttisellen, environmentally friendly processes are used throughout every stage of production. For example, the paint production machinery is cleaned exclusively with water. To prevent contaminated water from entering the sewage system, Lascaux has installed its own specially designed wastewater treatment facility on the premises.
Lascaux Colours and Restauro seem to have a profound connection to spirituality. Is this something you developed later and connected to your business and art, or is it something you’ve always felt?
I always use the metaphor that “I grew up in a paint pot”, because my father started producing Lascaux paints when I was a child. That was my environment. This whole world of creating with material, creating new realities and making the invisible visible was normal. There was this magical, alchemical process between the paint as material and the imagination of the artist creating it. When we talk about paint, people think, "Well, that's just paint. It's just pigment. It's just particles." But that has a spirit too. It has a soul too.
In our family, everything revolved around a fascination with colour, its development and its application. I grew up surrounded by paint and immersed in the rich sensory world of colour and its aesthetic environment.
The products also found their way into my hands as a child and I painted a lot. Colours are not perceived only through the eyes; they are perceived through our entire organism, our whole being. Colours are energies and have a spiritual dimension. The soul likes to express itself through images, colours and sound. Colour is part of the guiding system of human orientation.
Barbara Diethelm, Portals of light, 2017, installation view, Helmhaus, Zurich 2022
They are two callings that have become inseparably intertwined parts of my life. Two worlds that complement each other in a meaningful way: on the one hand, the dynamic business world, with its many appointments and meetings; on the other, the continuous studio work, alone and in silence.
For me, painting is a way of thinking. Art makes connections visible; it creates relationships. From time immemorial, one of the central tasks of art has been to convey spiritual and intellectual values.
How does Lascaux go against the grain?
Today’s world places a disproportionate emphasis on the material, while meaning is subordinated to consumption. At the same time, an awareness of the material itself is being lost. It has been reduced to a consumable and disposable commodity: devalued matter. You can see this in art as well: instead of communicating art, we often market art.
The artist-materials trade is very small. I know basically all the major manufacturers personally and I've known many of them for over thirty years. I know their strategies. I would say ninety per cent is about money and revenues. I'm not against that. Everyone has to do their own thing. But I don't think it's sustainable. You have to sell and sell, keep people unhappy enough that they always need to buy something new.
In a way, we make life very hard for ourselves; we keep everything. Artists, or their foundations, come to us and say, "We're restoring this artwork from 50 years ago — do you still have the material?" And we can still supply it. That's what it means to be against the grain. We're not feeding into this consumer model.
A very good, high-quality product is sustainable because you can go much further with it and use it for much longer. The same is true with everything — clothes, food. If you eat a healthy wholegrain bread, you don't need so much. If you eat white bread, you need a lot because you're still hungry.
I am convinced that matter forms the vessel for the spiritual, and that the two require a balance.
Good craftsmanship, however, does not in itself make art. The disposition for art, for creativity, is above all also a spiritual and emotional one. And this requires a great deal of preparation, commitment, endless work, and patience before one can truly sense it. What appears effortless and as though it emerged in a single moment is ultimately the fruitful result of long, arduous work and of penetrating deeply into the material.
I believe that the creative process—in the sense of creating something from matter—is a very important element. A present-day world that elevates rationality and technological progress to the status of supreme principles inevitably intensifies the need for emotional experiences and forms of expression. One-dimensionality and the renunciation of creativity lead to spiritual impoverishment.
Barbara Diethelm, Portals of light, 2017, installation view, Helmhaus, Zurich 2022
Lascaux sits at the premium end of artist materials for acrylics. What goes into making a paint of that quality?
A product manufactured in Switzerland is produced according to the highest and most stringent standards for safety and environmental compatibility. For us, responsible and resource-conscious production means, first and foremost, creating durable products rather than following trends or producing things designed to have a short lifespan.
Lascaux paints are sustainable because their intensity allows them to be used extremely sparingly. Our vision is to place the best possible materials in the hands of everyone as tools for creativity, so that colour can inspire children and adults alike.
The paint should not dictate what can or cannot be done. People should decide what they want to create. Our colours are for anyone who has the highest expectations — and that includes our children.
As a child, I became aware of differences in quality. The pictures I painted at home using the gouache paints from my father’s manufactory had a stronger expressive quality than those I used at school, where I only had conventional watercolours at my disposal. By comparison, these appeared flat and dull and were unable to express what I felt. This sensitivity shaped me, and from it my philosophy for developing colours emerged.
The quality of a paint is reflected in its handling properties and characteristics. These are determined by the quality of the raw materials and, above all, by the care taken during the manufacturing process.
Lascaux’s foremost concern is to place the very best materials in artists’ hands. This is why one of the company’s guiding principles is that Lascaux paints contain only those pigments and binders that, combined with pure water and numerous other components, create a harmonious, powerful and richly nuanced composition. This gives the paints tangible and distinctive qualities: they provide exceptional colour intensity and purity, make the paint highly economical to use and allow for a wide range of applications.
Barbara Diethelm, Portals of light, 2017, installation view, Helmhaus, Zurich 2022
Can you tell us about your experience running the company as a woman?
I took over from my father when he passed away, so I really had to jump into the deep end. Looking back, it was very tough. I remember my first meetings with the manufacturers' association...where all the competitors would come together once a year and for years, I was the only woman.
And as an artist I was forging the interaction between art and business. The two fields can and should complement each other. Today, business is the driving force behind all sociopolitical decisions. What is urgently needed, however, is a new ethic, a new awareness that allows business to use its power with moderation and to assume responsibility and establish a genuine sense of purpose. I think this corresponds to the holistic, feminine principle that is urgently needed to restore balance.
Art is one of the few areas that does not follow rational, scientific thinking. In art, the question of meaning is taken into account. Networked thinking, intuitive thinking.
One must, however, distinguish between art and the art market: the latter obeys the laws of economics, and art itself—the creation of meaning—is often left by the wayside.
For me, equality is not simply a question of gender, but above all a matter of balancing the feminine and masculine principles. These have nothing to do with being a man or a woman in the first place, but rather with two equally valuable fundamental principles that are essential to our lives and our continued existence.
When I took over my company from my father 25 years ago, I was in the minority and the only woman in a management position. I changed that quite quickly, and the number of female employees steadily increased, particularly in leadership positions. Over the past ten years, we have had an average female representation of 50%. My goal is not simply to achieve a proportional balance between women and men, but above all a balance between masculine and feminine principles. I see the company as a living organism, carried and developed by its members. It is important to me to recognise and foster employees’ individual potential and their initiative.
Do you think your feminine energy impacts the choices you make for Lascaux?
Yes. Being a woman and as well as an artist we're closer to certain feminine values: intuition, instinct, perceiving the invisible. Another feminine quality... which is not necessarily bound to women is really holding space for something. It's this unconditional love for something which gives you the power to protect...and guard it, no matter what. There are tough situations, but you don't just run away or throw it away. You hold this love and it informs your choices.
There's no better symbol for femininity than a spider. The Spider Woman appears at the beginning of many ancient stories. What I really like is that she not only weaves new threads, she also destroys old ones. That's an important feminine quality: to let go of what doesn't serve anymore.
The painting process is also always about letting go: of ideas, expectations, beliefs, and habits. Only those who let go can allow something in and trust that something essential will manifest itself.
What excites you most about the future of Lascaux?
What excites me is knowing that we're on the right track and that more people are waking up to truth and integrity — values that are so needed in the world. We have to connect with one another. We have to connect and create a web around the world.
There is no more direct access to our creative potential than through colour. No other medium brings us closer to ourselves and to our creative, generative potential. It gives us access to a world that exists without words.
Rather than focusing on the growth of Lascaux, my priority is the continuous enhancement of its quality and appeal. And that means doing what is close to our hearts: developing and producing colours and sharing them with enthusiasm and joy.
Colour should bring people joy and a sense of vitality.
Read more in Barbara Diethelm's book, Colours of the Great Heart | Resonating with Sirius
