Paul Signac, 1863-1935 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Book

During his fifty-year career, the French Neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac produced powerful works in many media. This beautiful book, which examines various aspects of Signac's career and reproduces in color some two hundred of his paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints, is an unprecedented overview of his art and influence. The book traces Signac's artistic development, which began with the luminous plein air paintings he made in the early 1880s, continued with his explorations of color harmony, contrasts, and neoimpressionist technique made in close association with Georges Seurat, and culminated with the scintillating works of his maturity, in which the rigors of pointillism gave way to richly patterned, decorative color surfaces. Essays discuss Signac's triumphs as a painter, draftsman, watercolorist, and printmaker, examine his role as a promoter of his own works and those of his colleagues, and shed new light on his appreciation of the works of his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. The volume also includes an annotated chronology and a map that pinpoints the sites depicted in Signac's works.