Paul Signac, 1863-1935 - Hardcover

Signac, Paul; Bocquillon-Ferretti, Marina; Grand Palais Paris; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam; Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300088604 ISBN 13: 9780300088601

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001

Synopsis

During his fifty-year career, the French Neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac produced powerful works in many media. This beautiful book, which examines various aspects of Signac's career and reproduces in color some two hundred of his paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints, is an unprecedented overview of his art and influence. The book traces Signac's artistic development, which began with the luminous plein air paintings he made in the early 1880s, continued with his explorations of color harmony, contrasts, and neoimpressionist technique made in close association with Georges Seurat, and culminated with the scintillating works of his maturity, in which the rigors of pointillism gave way to richly patterned, decorative color surfaces. Essays discuss Signac's triumphs as a painter, draftsman, watercolorist, and printmaker, examine his role as a promoter of his own works and those of his colleagues, and shed new light on his appreciation of the works of his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. The volume also includes an annotated chronology and a map that pinpoints the sites depicted in Signac's works.

About this title

Review

While Georges Seurat is the best-known pointillist, he wasn't the only one. Signac: 1863-1935 reintroduces a tireless advocate of neo-impressionism, a painter whose suburban imagery and leisured lifestyle belied his left-wing political views. Lively essays by scholars and curators portray different facets of Paul Signac's career. Virtually self-taught, he found the catalyst for his mature style in the small-scale brushwork of the slightly older Seurat, but replaced his serene, formal quality with overtly decorative patterning. As a yachtsman, Signac was drawn to marine subjects such as boats gliding on sparkling water at different times of day. After moving from Paris to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he took up watercolor, ideal for painting sunsets. Attempts at translating his political convictions into art (culminating with the monumental figure of a worker wielding a pickax) met with failure. But Signac's brilliance as a colorist is indisputable, infusing each of the 223 plates in this handsome book. --Cathy Curtis

From the Publisher

This book is the catalogue of the first retrospective of Signac's work in nearly forty years, which has been held at the Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and will be at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from October 9 to December 30, 2001.

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0300088604
• ISBN 13: 9780300088601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336