In France, on 1884, Georges Seurat, founded the Societé des Artistes Indépendants. In this society, he made friendship with Paul Signac, the man to know first about Seurat’s pointillist perspectives and techniques.

George Seurat was a painter of Pictorial Art and author of the famous work  “Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte”, thereafter, he became an icon of painting, during the XIX century, also, it was that masterpiece of two years of work that made him memorable, but, how did he had the idea to invent Pointillism?

Georges Seurat

During 1884, Georges Pierre Seurat, with Paul Signac invented the Pointillism technique, an artistic style and a branch of Impressionism, which has, as main objective, the use small dots to create patterns to complete or form an image. Seurat’s plan was to form an specific cromatism in each on his works, as in, for example, Seurat’s work “La Parade”. Seen from a considerable distance, the spectator may think that is a full form painted with a heat effect or some sort of movement (similar effect in cinetism), while, seen in close distance, the spectator realizes that this vibrance effect is in fact a form made of dots.

The visual effects of the Pointillism technique

As we know, Divisionism cares about the theory of color, but Pointillism cares about the specific use of the brush to apply the paint, taking advantage of the eyes capability to combine colors, trying to stimulate the spectators mind, at the same time, by the use of a wider gamma tones. Seurat and Signac did not agree to most of the official concepts of their technique, and they were against them as they thought their creation was exquisite and beyond the known ideas established by the Divisionism perspective. They thought that Pointillism was a painting technique that would be compared to music and they used Chevreul and Charles Blanc theories as background.

Pointillism by other artists

Vincent Van Gogh did a few works using pointillism, in some opportunity he did a self-portrait using this technique. Also, Charles Angrand did some works with using pointillism, but as he had a friendship with Seurat and Signac, he was eventually influenced by the Neoimpressionism (term created by the french artist Félix Féneon in 1887). Hippolyte Petitjean was another artist with a post-impressionist style base, that did the marvelous “Femmes au bain”, a pointillism work, but Le Pont Neuf remains as one of his most famous works.

Eccentric Pointillism in 2019

Though there are new painters and talented artists to talk about, is worth to do it about good and young artists like Anton-Constantin Anastassov, a Bulgarian painter of a style he named “gothic surrealism”. Anastassov draws in ink and pencil colors as amazing as he does it with acrylic paint and oil. One of his most beautiful Pointillism influenced works is called “Forget Everything”, a mesmerizing masterpiece to look over and over again without feeling bored. He remains for sure as one of the keepers of a technique that has been created since the almost last two centuries.