The history of Flashe

The history of Flashe

From the outset, Lefranc Bourgeois has sought to make each colour more than just a hue: a vibrant, visceral blend of texture and emotion. The company brings colour to life and offers every artist the chance to reveal their talent. Since 1720, Lefranc Bourgeois has been innovating and moving towards the painting of the future to make it easier for all artists to create. And the unique features of the Flashe are testament to this.

It was in 1954 that Lefranc Bourgeois developed Flashe, the first vinyl paint to be used as an alternative to traditional art materials. Initially designed for theatre and opera sets, Flashe quickly became an icon for emblematic artists such as Vasarely and Niki de Saint Phalle, for the intensity of its pigments, its matt finish and its coverage.

Later, in the 1980s, Victor Vasarely, the great master of optical art, helped to make the properties of Flashe even more exceptional by collaborating with the expert chemists at Lefranc Bourgeois. The artist benefited from the technological know-how of the paint laboratories and together they developed a specific range bearing the Vasarely name and logo. Vasarely was a man of optical metamorphoses. His works include the Renault logo and the monumental frescoes in the reception hall of Montparnasse station in Paris. Although the Flashe label has now disappeared, the range is no less famous and appreciated by artists the world over. Anchored in the Fine Arts market, it continues to fascinate with its unique character, recognisable from all the other paintings.

Flashe was a natural choice for art schools. Its properties of consistency, mattness and coverage mean that budding artists can experiment with all kinds of surfaces: metal, fabric, plastic, glass, foam, wood... An endless playground that has everything to appeal to students eager to discover and experiment.

A whole range of acrylic additives is available to push back the limits of creativity. In fact, Flashe extra-fine paint works perfectly with the properties of these additives, and together they increase the possibilities tenfold. Pouring and dripping are two significant examples. While the former is reminiscent of the veining of marble, thanks to the extremely fluid paint poured onto the canvas, the latter inevitably evokes the works of Jackson Pollock, with projected paint and superimposed drops.