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Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
PAUL SIGNAC Au Bord de la Rivière.
Watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930. 210x239 mm; 8 1/4x9 3/8 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower left recto. Ex-collection Galerie Levy, Lyon, France; Gerhard Wurzer Gallery, Houston; Park Fine Art, Chicago; private collection, Chicago.
As a young artist in Paris, Signac (1863-1935) was heavily influenced by the Impressionists and the Parisian avant-garde. In 1884, Signac and a group of fellow artists, frustrated by the conservative juried exhibition of the Salon de Paris, founded the Salon des Indépendants as an outlet for unrestricted expression. Through this new association, Signac met fellow post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Seurat's extensive study of color theory and experiments with optical mixing yielded a new technique known as Pointillism of which Signac became a disciple.
Pointillism stems from the use of small dots of color which ultimately are perceived as a harmonious blend of gradations and hues when viewed from a distance; it became the hallmark of the Neo-Impressionists. Signac and Seurat were precise and mathematic in their paint application and color selections.
After Seurat's premature death in 1891, Signac ushered Neo-Impressionism into the new century, influencing not only his contemporaries like Camille Pissarro and Vincent Van Gogh, but a new generation of modern artists such as Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain and Wassily Kandinsky.
