Acrylic Painting

History of  Acrylic Paint

As early as 1934 the first usable acrylic resin dispersion was developed by German chemical company BASF, which was patented by Rohm and Haas. The synthetic paint was first used in 1940s, combining some of the properties of oil and watercolor. Between 1946 and 1949, Leonard Bocour and Sam Golden invented a solution acrylic paint under the brand Magna paint. These were mineral spirit-based paints. Acrylics were made commercially available in the 1950s. A waterborne acrylic paint called "Aquatec" would soon follow. 

Otto Rohm invented acrylic resin, which quickly transformed into acrylic paint. In 1953, the year that Rohm and Haas developed the first acrylic emulsions, Jose L. Gutierrez produced Politec Acrylic Artists' Colors in Mexico, and Permanent Pigments Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, produced Liquitex colors. These two product lines were the very first acrylic emulsion artists' paints. Water-based acrylic paints were subsequently sold as latex house paints, as latex is the technical term for a suspension of polymer microparticles in water. Interior latex house paints tend to be a combination of binder (sometimes acrylic, vinyl, pva, and others), filler, pigment, and water. Exterior latex house paints may also be a co-polymer blend, but the best exterior water-based paints are 100% acrylic, due to elasticity and other factors, but vinyl costs half of what 100 percent acrylic resins cost, and PVA (polyvinyl acetate) is even cheaper, so paint companies make many combinations of them to match the market.