Liquitex

In 1955, a company in Cincinnati, Ohio named Permanent Pigments that had been milling oil colors since 1933 and run by a man named Henry Levison launched a new product. This new artists’ color was formulated with an acrylic polymer resin that was emulsified with water. The new color could go from thick to thin and everywhere in between; it would adhere to anything – from canvas to paper to metal to wood to plastic– and it dried quickly for easy re-working, layering, and masking. Most important, it could be thinned and cleaned up with water.

Levison tried to come up with a name that captured the essence of the medium and the fact that it could go from fluid liquidity to heavy texture and everyplace else in between. The color was called liquid texture or Liquitex.