Photo Credit: Ortensie dipinte da Gianni Maimeri
Brera Acrylic Extrafine acrylic colours.
Ahhh, the Italians. This company was founded in 1923 by an man named Gianni Maimeri. Mr. Maimeri was a Impressionist Painter. He made artists’ oil paint. Today this company is still best known for their oil paints but they also product acrylic and watercolor paint. The factory is located in Milan. Brera Acrylic is the name of the main line of acrylic paint produced by Maimeri. Their packaging goes go on to add the tag line “extrafine acrylic colour” in a rather grand Italian way.
Maimeri Acrylic Mediums:
You can get three gel mediums to go with your Maimeri Acrylic paint. They are Dense Gel Medium, Gel Medium Gloss, and Gel Medium Matte. This is pretty much your basic medium package offered by most acrylic paint manufacturers. Maimeri also produced a fluid gloss medium and a retarder meduim. As of this writing, I can’t find any texture Maimeri mediums produced for use with acrylic paint.
Maimeri Student Grade Acrylic:
Maimeri offers a student line of acrylic pain called START. As usual, these paints carry a reduced pigment load and contain a large percentage of filler. This makes them less expensive and more likely to be purchased by students and beginners.
Note about Maimeri Polycolor Acrylic:
As of 2007, maimeri is producing a product line Polycolor Acrylics. Which is best described as a ‘vinyl” based hybrid acrylic paint. That is confusing to me. Is it or is it not acrylic? The Polycolor paint is designed to be used on flexible surfaces like leather, vinyl and fabric. This paint is produced for muralist, decorative painting, and other unique situation where one need to paint on a flexible surface. Fine Art Painters probably need avoid using this hybrid and stick with the Brera Acrylic pigments. (see video below)
How to buy:
When shopping or Maimeri paint online, be careful to only purchase mediums for acryic paint. Maimeri offers a myraid of products to accompany their oil paint line. Remember, oil and acrylic don’t mix. This is not usually a problem when shopping in a retail store since the paint will be displayed in different sections of the store. You can find maimeri online at DickBlick and Jerry’s Art-o-Rama. Apparently is is distributed in the USA by a company called Armadillo Art. A visit to their website is kinda fun, as of this writing they still have a rather quirkly 1990′s palette style photo navigation system that is wacked out and sort of retro.
I am looking for this product and need to know where to purchase it in Canada…particularly alberta or saskatchewan…or??? please advise
Hi Rose,
I think your best bet might be to order online from someplace like DickBlick.com. Not sure about Canadian Retailers in your area, the Maimeri website is no help at all for this. Sorry I can’t be of more assistance.
I heard of Polycolor (polyvinyl color?
) on a nail art video. I have been using Golden fluid acrylics and Createx air brush paints… the concentrated colors give better coverage when painting on nail polish, since the application cannot be thick and the surface is slick… it creates some challenges and I am working “small” so I need paint that will flow nicely and not clump for thin lines. Thank you for your review, and, can I ask, is there an acrylic you would recommend for my work? Hopefully something that is available in small quantities. Will be browsing the site for a while, excellent!
Polycolor is acrylic AND vinyl, a copolymer. It is more adhesive than acrylic and VERY Opaque, very saturated and very matte. Flashe is another brand that has been around since 1954. Both are nice alternatives to gouache as they are more permanent.