Symphony of Colors: Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism
Achieving the highest degree of luminosity and harmony—this was the goal to which Paul Signac dedicated himself when, in the mid-1880s, he introduced a new style of painting to the art world together with Georges Seurat. The exhibition Symphony of Colors: Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism is the first comprehensive Signac exhibition in Germany in 30 years; it highlights the artist’s central role within the Neo-Impressionist movement and explores his influence as a theorist, networker, and exhibition organizer.
At the Impressionists’ final joint exhibition in 1886, artists who would later call themselves Neo-Impressionists exhibited their work in Paris. By juxtaposing unmixed colors, they sought to create an effect in their paintings that would evoke pure light. The landscape motifs resembled those of their Impressionist predecessors, yet they replaced their airy atmosphere and spontaneous brushwork with serially applied dabs of paint in the colors of the prism. This decomposition of colors—which were no longer to be mixed on the palette but in the viewer’s eye—drew inspiration from new findings in optics and the physiology of perception.
Hasso Plattner Collection
Paul Signac: The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez), 1892
Paul Signac: Sunday, 1888–1890, Private collection
The Neo-Impressionist paintings invite viewers to contemplate the harmony within the image, seeking a balance between often complementary colors, between verticals and horizontals, or between surface and space. Other works feature arabesque patterns that extend across the picture plane and abstract real objects. The exhibition Symphony of Colors: Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism presents the artist as one of the central figures of this movement. It explores his artistic oeuvre, from the early coastal landscapes of the passionate sailor, through his interior and portrait paintings, to the socially utopian images of the Côte d’Azur, which he developed into a treasure trove of motifs for Modernism.
Théo van Rysselberghe, Paul Signac at the Helm of the “Olympia,” 1896, Archives Signac, Paris
The exhibition features over 90 works, more than a third of which are by Paul Signac. They are presented alongside paintings by Lucie Cousturier, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Camille Pissarro, Théo van Rysselberghe, Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange, Georges Seurat, Jan Toorop, and others. Lenders include the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva; the Archives Signac, Paris; and other national and international collections.
Vincent Everarts
Anna Boch, Returning from Fishing, 1891, Private collection, Belgium, Courtesy Virginie Devillez Fine Art
Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange, Portrait of Colette, ca. 1907, CFC Collection
Maximilien Luce, The Harbor of Saint-Tropez, 1893, Private collection
Henri-Edmond Cross, Calanque des Antibois, 1891-92, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
The Museum Barberini, which houses one of the largest collections of Neo-Impressionist works in Germany—including ten pieces by Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, and Camille Pissarro from the Hasso Plattner Collection—is presenting Symphony of Colors: Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism, its third exhibition on the subject, following Color and Light: The Neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross (2018) and The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro's Impressionism (2025).
An exhibition by the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, and the Kunsthal Rotterdam.