Neo-Impressionism, literally “new Impressionism,” was an avant-garde art movement that fell under the larger Post-Impressionism umbrella. It emerged in reaction to what was viewed as the overly free and spontaneous painting practices of the Impressionists and rooted itself in a methodical and scientific approach. The movement was launched in 1886 and took shape through the efforts of Georges Seurat, who introduced “pointillism,” a system that he called “chromo-luminarism” that did away with traditional line drawing and instead consisted of applying precise dots of contrasting pigments next to one another on canvas. When done correctly, the dots, when seen from a remove, would coalesce into bold defined forms and brilliant saturated color in a full range of hues. Rather than having the artist mix the paints on a palette first, the viewer’s eye does the mixing, which produces a far more luminescent display of color—a phenomenon that Seurat understood from studying the writings of color theorists Michel-Eugène Chevreul, Charles Henry, and Ogden Rood.
One of the most famous paintings in the history of art, the monumental A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86), was painted by Seurat by using pointillism. With the showing of La Grande Jatte at the final major Impressionism exhibition in 1886, along with works by pointillists Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro, Neo-Impressionism was established. Art critic Félix Fénéon, upon seeing the pointillist works at that exhibition, coined the name Neo-Impressionists for the small group of artists, which at that time included Signac, Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Albert Duboit-Pillet, Henri-Edmond Cross, and Charles Angrand. The group grew to include Maximilien Luce, Théo Van Rysselberghe, Henry van de Velde, and others.
Seurat died suddenly of illness in 1891, only 31 years old, and Signac took over as leader of the movement, which carried on until about 1906 (Cubism would start to take hold of the avant-garde imagination soon after). Neo-Impressionism had a lasting effect on many artists and movements, notably on Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse (especially, for example, Matisse’s Luxe, calme et volupté, 1904–05), and much later on, Pop Art.
Name the Impressionists