Up until the middle of the 19th century the palette of artists’ colours was limited to a relatively small number of inorganic pigments of mineral or synthetic origin and natural organic colorants. The latter were typically derived from plants. Due to the rapid development of the chemical industry at the end of the 19th century, an intensive search for new dyes and pigments began. Numerous patents, which were given in rapid succession, are evidence of this development. An abundance of new products starting from early tar or aniline dyes had improved properties such as increased light or solvent stability. Synthetic organic pigments are in their chemical composition and colour spectrum of enormous variety and still are the subject of development. Today, there are hundreds of such pigments on the market, including the classes of azo, phthalocyanine and chinacridone pigments, or also the diketopyrrolopyrrole pigments which were first introduced in the 1980s.
