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The Pierre Gianadda Foundation celebrated its 25th birthday in 2003. To mark the occasion, it organised a Signac retrospective, the first ever to take place in Switzerland.
Around one hundred works - oils on canvas, painted studies, drawings and watercolours - led you through the life and works of the artist. They show Paul Signac (1863-1935) to be the definitive Mediterranean painter, who was also moved by the poetry of industrial suburbs and large modern ports. These works demonstrate the enthusiasm the young Signac had discovering impressionism, then his contribution to the birth of neo-impressionism alongside his friend Georges Seurat and, finally, the adoption of a freer technique and more intense colours after his move to Saint-Tropez. They also show how Signac's work evolved on this journey, from beautiful black-and-white drawings of the first years in Paris to dexterous and colourful watercolours, which largely took over from oils at the end of his career.
1882-1885: the impressionist period
At 16, the adolescent Signac shared his time between Montmartre,
where he moved in the literary circles of the avant-garde and
frequented the cabaret at the Chat noir, and Asnières, where he learnt
the joys of pleasure boats. He discovered his vocation for painting
in 1880 at a Monet exhibition and was not even 18 when he painted
his first impressionist studies. Their freedom and independence
reflect these youthful years. Signac chose to paint vistas of
Montmartre, which was undergoing urbanisation at the time, and of his hometown of Asnières. This residential suburb of Paris was in mid-development, and the banks of the Seine confronted him with two complementary aspects of the modernity he loved to paint: on one side was the industrial and technological development, on the other was the birth of marine leisure. In summer, Signac left Paris for the coast, usually Port-en-Bessin or Saint-Briac, where he painted very bold marine scenes. From the word go, colour was used forcefully in these first canvases. The artist favoured frontal views that allowed him to combine horizontal and vertical lines to clearly distinguish the geometric, colourful beaches.
1886-1891: the first neo-impressionist years
In 1884, Signac met Seurat at the establishment of the Salon
des Indépendants. Both admired Delacroix, were interested in
Charles Blanc's La Grammaire des arts du dessin (Grammar of Painting
and Engraving) and read Sutter and Rood's theories on optics.
They also visited Chevreul and met Charles Henry, the young
academic who published his Introduction à une esthétique scientifique
in 1885. Progressively, the idea of an "optical mixture of colours"
grew on them and, from autumn 1885, Seurat juxtaposed points of
unadulterated colour in the works he completed in Grandcamp.
He then completely redid his large painting, Un dimanche à la Grande
Jatte (Sunday at the Grande Jatte), which wasn't previously divided.
In February 1886, a most definitely convinced Signac reworked
Les Modistes with little touches of paint; he decided
to display this large picture at the eighth impressionist exhibition.
He began to paint neo-impressionist landscapes near Asnières in the
spring of 1886 and completed his first series of divided canvases
over the summer that he spent in Andelys.
The artist's first known drawings date from 1885. Just like his
friend Seurat, the self-taught Signac then used the Conté pencil
technique and produced works in black and white where forms took
shape from contrasts of light and shade. It is noteworthy that the
artist only divided a drawing when a neo-impressionist work was to
be reproduced. In this technique that preaches the objectivity of
the scientific observer, Signac had found a stylistic equivalent
of the detached view he had of the world. However, it is mostly
because he had glimpsed a process that allowed the exaltation of
colour that he adopted this technique definitively. The suburban
landscapes were slowly replaced by admirable series of painted marine
scenes in Portrieux, Cassis and Saint-Briac, which contained extremes
of analysis and of serenity. In winter, Signac painted scenes of
modern life with his signature caustic humour, Un dimanche for
example, carefully painted with many preparatory painted and drawn
studies. Seurat's sudden death in 1891 left Signac deeply distraught.
In the following months, he painted three serene marine views of
Concarneau and Femme se coiffant, one of the pinnacles of his career.
He knew the future of the new school, which was attacked from all
angles, was now in his hands, and he became the unquestionable
spokesperson for neo-impressionism.
1892-1900: Saint-Tropez
The discovery of Saint-Tropez in the spring of 1892 marked a turning
point in the painter's life and works. From now on, he left Paris in
the spring, as soon as the organisation of the Salon des Indépendants
would allow, and moved to the small Mediterranean port until autumn.
With clear jubilation, he then painted the now famous silhouette of
the village and quay in profile against the hills of Maures and Esterel.
He also painted pines, cypresses and planes, tartanes and sailing ships
all in the subtleties of light he never tired of exploring. Without
renouncing colour division, he adopted a freer style and, as in his
nature paintings, his touches of colour grew. Canvases depicting an
unchanging Mediterranean gained in both strength and simplicity.
It was also in Saint-Tropez that the artist discovered watercolours, which would over the years play a leading role in his work. For a while, he adopted a Japanese technique where the delicate transparencies of watercolour are rigidly structured by a line of Indian ink. Here too though, the painter evolved towards a greater freedom: he would let coloured brushstrokes over a light sketch instantly translate his visual sensations.
From 1893 to 1900, Signac also tried his hand at decorative painting,
particularly in honour at the turn of the century. Around 1900,
he unsuccessfully took part in a competition to decorate Asnières
town hall and, as his large preliminary paintings show, he took the
suburbs as his subject.
1901-1935: liberation of colour
From the turn of the century, Signac painted scenes
of the banks of the Seine and Mediterranean landscapes. He also
painted Venice and its monuments suspended between water and sky,
Rotterdam port with its confusion and intense tension, and
Constantinople, which on his canvases looked like a Byzantine mosaic.
The admirer of Claude and Turner was now composing works with decorative
classicism and aggravated colours that were a long way from the
"scientific" objectivity of his earlier works. At this time,
there were more and more exhibitions of Signac's work in Paris;
in Europe, he took part in most of the big avant-garde installations
like the Viennese Secession and the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne.
His work D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, published in 1899
and re-edited many times, was read by a whole generation of young
painters, many of whom visited him at La Hune, the villa he bought
shortly after his arrival in Saint-Tropez. His organisation of the
Salon des Indépendants, of which he became president in 1908, also
contributed to making him one of the leading figures of the European
art world. During the first decade of the 20th century, a renewed
interest in colour arose, and from Matisse to Picabia, including the
Italian futurists and not forgetting Mondrian and Kandinsky, the
neo-impressionist technique, freely interpreted, was a liberating
passage that opened new doors. However, 1910 marked the start of a
crisis: Signac left Saint-Tropez in 1913 and went to Antibes where
the war temporarily kept him. This convicted anarchist saw his world
and his pacifistic ideals crumbling around him: he painted very little
until 1918. After the war, he once again took the reins of the
Indépendants, and the series of studies painted in Antibes proved
his vigour and energy were fully intact. Signac also reprised his
peregrinations, which became almost incessant. From this point on,
he travelled the length and breadth of France, watercolour brush in
hand. Even though he displayed some neo-impressionist works at the
Salon des Indépendants each year - views of the Seine or Saint-Malo
that proved he still had a passion for colour - it was watercolours
that really appealed to his inner artist. His last big project was
the ports of France, painted in watercolour, which followed his long
tour, day by day. Signac earnestly translated the contrasting aspects
of French scenery and has left us with the beautiful evidence of a
continually alert curiosity, portraying rigging on a traditional fishing
boat and more modern equipment in pre-war ports with equal
attentiveness.
Exhibition catalogue
All the works on display are reproduced in full
colour in the exhibition catalogue. The text is by Marina
Ferretti-Bocquillon, with an introduction by Françoise Cachin.
Price CHF 45.- (approx. euro 30.-).
Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon have commissioned
the exhibition.
Françoise Cachin is the painter's granddaughter and the author of
the descriptive catalogue, in collaboration with Marina
Ferretti-Bocquillon, who was co-commissioner of the Signac
retrospective at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, in
Paris in 2001.
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