Pointillism is one of the few artistic movements to achieved near-ubiquitous recognition. Works like Paul Signac's Portrait of Felix Feneon or Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte appear in almost every major museum, where we delight in examining the thousands of tiny, distinct dots before stepping back to watch them blend together, as if by magic, to form richly detailed masterpieces of exceptional brightness and color. In addition to their beauty, we are fascinated with pointillism because this pathbreaking method was among the see artists render figures and landscapes in a way that did not focus solely on the imitation of reality. Pointillism: From End to Beginning: Seurat, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso brings together more than one hundred paintings and drawings from the mid-1880s to 1930 that take readers through the movement, from the earliest works by Signac and Seurat through various later developments in pointillist technique to the late days of the movement, when Vincent van Gogh and other artists of the modern era began to free themselves from pointillism's constraints. In addition to Signac, Seurat, and Van Gogh, Pointillism includes works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee, among many others. The book shows how artists approached this method throughout the twentieth century. Critical texts additionally explore how this movement marked a major turning point--the beginning of modern painting. Drawing on masterpieces from around the world, Pointillism guides readers through this beloved branch of impressionism, bringing it to life with nearly two hundred full-color illustrations, including full and detail photographs.
