Lascaux cave paintings

Lascaux Cave in Dordogne France

"Art first appeared with the Cromagnons who were barely surviving in the midst of an ice age. They had no spare time for cultural luxuries. Yet, to make their paintings, these prehistoric artists would crawl and climb as far as a mile into dark caves carrying charcoal and the red earth which they used for color. The only light came from flickering grease lamps and pine torches."

Cave painting

Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux

Lascaux Cave Paintings - Virtual Tour

Rafael Nadal and the Lascaux Cave Paintings by David Linebarger - Cagibi

For a long time, we thought our species were the only artists

Hall of The Bulls, Lascaux Caves France. The five metre-long bulls, the graceful stags, the rutting bison, the very same prehistoric images discovered in 1940 that changed the history of art.

Located in the Dordogne region in southwestern France, these cave paintings are beautifully perseved and estimated to be over 20,000 years old. Most paintings inside the cave depict large animals that were native to the region, representing the environment around the people who painted these elaborate works of early art.

ARTSEDGE: September 12

Laurel Barbieri Studios

Chauvet (34,000 BCE)

The Lascaux paintings ... almost 18,000 years old.

After visiting the Altamira cave paintings in northern Spain, Pablo Picasso famously exclaimed

My fascination with prehistoric art goes back a long way. I always loved history as much as doing art, and I longed to understand the people who lived their lives many millennium in the past in anc…