Neo-Impressionism

Neo-Impressionism was a movement launched in Paris in 1886 when Georges Seurat exhibited A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, applying a systematic technique its practitioners called Divisionism or Pointillism: small, distinct dots or dabs of pure, unmixed color placed side by side so the eye would optically blend them, based on contemporary color theory rather than the Impressionists' more intuitive brushwork. Seurat and his close collaborator Paul Signac led the movement, which briefly drew Camille Pissarro away from Impressionism proper, and treated painting as a rigorous, almost scientific discipline governed by rules of color contrast and harmony rather than spontaneous observation. Though Seurat's death in 1891 at thirty-one cut the movement's central figure short, Signac carried its principles forward into the twentieth century and its systematic color theory left a direct mark on Henri Matisse and the Fauves.