Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism

The MMFA transports you to 19th and 20th century Paris in the company of the great Post-Impressionist masters. Paris, 1900: a revolution was underway during the Belle Époque. “Art for all!” declared artists who exhibited under the motto “no jury, no awards.”

Cofounder of the Salon des Indépendants, Paul Signac (1863-1935) made a name for himself as the theoretician of the so-called “postimpressionist scientists.” He applied pure colour to the canvas in tightly placed dots, such that the form would emerge from the optical blending in the viewer’s eye. He sought to create an all-encompassing art, somewhere between the paradise lost of the golden age and social utopia.

Signac championed positivist painting, which promoted technical and political modernity. The new pointillist style of his “Neo” peers spread like wildfire from Paris to Brussels, glorifying the better days to come. Moreover, according to the writings of such critics as Fénéon, Signac positioned himself as an engaged intellectual in the era of the Dreyfus affair.