Signac, 1863-1935

Book excerpt: This book, the catalogue of the first retrospective of the work of the French Neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac to be held in nearly forty years, accompanies the 2001 exhibition organised by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Musee d'Orsay, Paris, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This long overdue tribute to Signac's power of expression and artistic influence features some two hundred paintings, drawings, watercolours, and prints from public and private collections worldwide. Fully illustrated in colour and discussed in individual entries, these works offer an unprecedented overview of Signac's fifty-year career. Signac's artistic development began with the luminous plein air paintings he made in the early 1880s which reveal the lessons he absorbed from Monet, Guillaumin, and other leading Impressionists. From 1884 until 1891 Signac's close association with Georges Seurat encouraged his explorations of colour harmony, contrasts, and Neoimpressionist technique. In the scintillating works of his maturity the rigours of Pointillism gave way to richly patterned, decorative colour surfaces. In a series of essays the exhibition's curators disc