Cave Art

People made the first ancient images on the walls of caves where they lived 35-10 thousand years B.C. People made their images with natural paints using natural dyes or metal oxide. So mostly colors were red, yellow, brown, ocher, and similar colors. For drawing, they used animal bones with their fur at the end of the bones. People also drew with their hands or used tubular bones through which the paint was blown out. If a man wants to make a volumetric image, he used natural curves of caves or embossed an image with a sharp stone.

Most of the Paleolithic age people imaged animals such as horses, bulls, deer. But they also drew women. There are a few interpretations of a cave image meaning. The most common version is that the people of that period drew animals for their luck in a hunt. If they draw an animal killing by a spear, it meant they will be able to kill the same animal in the real life.

In my opinion, the most beautiful version is that the people drew animals because they admired them. The people wanted to be as strong, beautiful, and grace as animals. The people watched them and then sketched them on the walls of caves.

As I’ve written before, the people didn’t only draw animals. They also drew women. It was because they praised the women ability to engender new life. So at that time women were kind of idols, and it’s the reason why the cave people drew them on the cave walls.

The most famous caves:

-         Grotte de Lascaux, France;

-         La cueva de Altamira, Spain;

-         Font-de-Gaume, France;

-         Grotte de Niaux, France;

-         Kapova cave, Russia.

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sources

books:

The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich

The Art of the Ancient World by L.Lyubimov

documentaries: 

BBC: Sister Wendy's Story Of Painting