Georges Seurat: Biography and Pointillism: Death, Legacy and the Essence of the Movement

As the organizer of the exhibition, he exhausted himself presenting the works.

He became bedridden, extremely feverish.

He developed infectious angina and, before the exhibition ended, passed away on Easter Sunday, March 29, 1891.

The next day, Madeleine Knobloch presented herself at the town hall, identifying herself as the mother of Pierre-Georges Seurat.

The child, who had contracted the contagious disease from his father, died on April 13, 1891.

Seurat was buried in the family vault at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

In addition to his seven monumental paintings, he left 40 smaller paintings and sketches, around 500 drawings, and several sketchbooks.

Although a modest output in terms of quantity, they demonstrate that he was among the leading painters of one of the greatest periods in the history of art.

Seurat's paintings and artistic theories influenced many of his contemporaries, from Paul Signac to Vincent van Gogh and many Symbolist artists.

His monumental A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is considered an iconic work of late 19th-century art.

This painting and Seurat's career inspired Steven Sondheim to write the musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984).

The same painting is featured in John Hughes' 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off (the theme was not translated into Portuguese).

 Neo-impressionism - Pointillism - Divisionism

Neo-impressionism is the term given to the post-impressionist work of Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and their followers, who, inspired by optical theory, painted using tiny adjacent brushstrokes of primary colors to create the effect of light.

It is characterized by the use of the divisionist technique (often popularly, but incorrectly referred to as pointillism, a term that Paul Signac rejected).

Divisionism attempted to place impressionist light and color on a scientific basis using an optical mixture of colors.

Instead of mixing colors on the palette, which reduces intensity, the components of primary colors of each color were placed separately on the canvas in small brushstrokes so that they would mix in the viewer's eye.

The optically mixed colors move towards white, so this method gave greater luminosity.

In neo-impressionism or pointillism, figures are represented by small points or colored patches that mix when viewed from a certain distance.

At times, these points transform into lines that serve as contours.

The points of color are more separated, and the themes used are more important than the pointillist paintings themselves.

Using this technique, Seurat created enormous compositions with tiny, highlighted pure color strokes that were too small to be distinguished when looking at the entire work, but made his paintings shine as never before shown by any other artist.

The new movement was led by

Georges Seurat, who was its original theorist and the most significant artist of the movement, and by Paul Signac, also an important artist and the movement's main advocate, who coined the term "neo-impressionism".

Other adherent painters were Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, Théo van Rysselberghe, and, for a time, the impressionist Camille Pissarro and the Fauvist Henri Matisse.

The group founded the Société des Artistes Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists) in 1884.

They all experimented with the technique but eventually abandoned it, preferring the compact brushstroke to the point, with the exception of Seurat, who died before he could apply his invention.

To understand the rest of this journey, continue reading our next article: Georges Seurat: Biography and Pointillism: Notable Works and the Commented Gallery.