Expert Talks: Signac and Neo-Impressionismus

Achieving the highest degree of luminosity and harmony was Paul Signac’s guiding ambition when, together with Georges Seurat, he pioneered Neo-Impressionism in the mid-1880s. Rather than being mixed on the palette, colors were applied to the canvas in small dots, intended to blend only in the viewer’s eye. Artists including Camille Pissarro, Henri-Edmond Cross, Théo van Rysselberghe, Anna Boch, and Jan Toorop embraced this new approach and helped spread it across Europe. Signac played a pivotal role in the movement—not only as a painter, but also as a theorist, collector, teacher, organizer, and one of Neo-Impressionism’s foremost advocates.

In conversation with art historians and curators, this video introduces the exhibition’s key themes. Featuring Marina Ferretti Bocquillon, former Director of the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny; Charlotte Cachin, Archives Signac, Paris; Nerina Santorius, Museum Barberini, Potsdam; Richard Thomson, University of Edinburgh; and Jean-Rémi Touzet, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.