Signac and the Indépendants

Book excerpt: A magnificently illustrated showcase of works by artists in Paris at the dawn of the 20th century In Paris at the turn of the 20th century, an artistic revolution was underway. The Salon des Indépendants was organized in 1884 by a group of artists and thinkers that included Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac, who was the organization's president from 1908 to his death in 1935. They chose as their slogan "neither jury nor reward" (ni jury ni récompenses), and for the following three decades their annual exhibitions set new trends that profoundly changed the course of Western art. This beautifully illustrated volume features paintings and graphic works by an impressive range of artists who exhibited at these avant-garde gatherings where Impressionists (Monet and Morisot), Fauves (Dury, Friesz, and Marquet), Symbolists (Gauguin, Mucha, and Redon), Nabis (Bonnard, Denis, and Lacombe), and Neo-Impressionists (Cross, Pissarro, and Seurat) all came together. Distributed for Editions Hazan, Paris Exhibition Schedule: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (July 4-November 15, 2020)