Signac (The Hermann Genius Pocket Guide)

Explore the brilliant color and carefully ordered vision of Paul Signac (1863–1935), the French Neo-Impressionist who helped develop Pointillism and carried its principles into the twentieth century. This pocket guide traces Signac’s career from early Impressionist influences to the luminous coastal scenes, harbor views, watercolors, and mosaic-like paintings for which he is best known. Learn what to look for in his divided brushstrokes, complementary colors, rhythmic compositions, and carefully planned effects of light. Biographical insights, lively anecdotes, a personal portrait, and memorable quotations reveal his friendships, travels, political convictions, and important role as a writer and advocate for modern art. A close examination of one major work explains how separate touches of color combine in the viewer’s eye. With more than 65 full-color reproductions, this compact guide presents an artist whose disciplined technique produced images of remarkable freshness, clarity, and radiance.

Paul Signac was a French painter and theorist who, alongside Georges Seurat, became a leading figure of Neo-Impressionism. He developed a systematic approach to color in which separate touches of pigment interact optically in the viewer's eye, a technique closely associated with Divisionism and Pointillism. His paintings, writings, and advocacy helped spread new theories of color and influenced artists ranging from the Neo-Impressionists to the Fauves.