Most artists are fussy about their paints, but few go to such lengths as Berlin-born Karl Zerbe. His pictures, which hang in 21 U.S. museums, are painted in colors mixed with hot beeswax over a stove, and afterwards cooked into the canvas with an electric heater. The Greeks had a word for it: encaustic. The Egyptians and Greeks liked encaustic for its permanency, used it for murals and mummy portraits. But since the 10th Century few painters had bothered with it.
Zerbe, 43, never liked the paint that comes from tubes. Since his student days at Frankfurt (where he studied chemistry), he...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
