Artists of Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnon man lived during a period encompassing what archeologists refer to as the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultural eras which hit their peaks respectively about 20,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Over a period of 20,000 years, Cro-Magnon artists in Europe worked to produce galleries of art that still astonish modern people. The European paintings are found deep inside caves in what is modern Spain and France.

Cro-Magnon artists used cave walls as their canvases and durable antler and ivory, not wood and skins as palettes.

The most frequently painted subjects were animals, pictured in browns, reds, yellows, and blacks from pigments available to the Stone Age artists. The animals were the game for both Cro-Magnon hunters looked reindeer, bison, cattle deer and horses.

The oldest of the Cro-Magnon caves, Chauvet in France, was painted 33,000 years ago and exhibited as advanced an artistic capacity as any of the later caves.
Artists of Cro-Magnon