1863-1935 French Paul Signac Galleries Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on November 11, 1863. He followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter. He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered. He also painted scenes of cities in France in his later years. In 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He was struck by the systematic working methods of Seurat and by his theory of colours and became Seurat's faithful supporter. Under his influence he abandoned the short brushstrokes of impressionism to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure colour, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas but in the viewer's eye, the defining feature of pointillism. Many of Signac's paintings are of the French coast. He left the capital each summer, to stay in the south of France in the village of Collioure or at St. Tropez, where he bought a house and invited his friends. In March 1889, he visited Vincent van Gogh at Arles. The next year he made a short trip to Italy, seeing Genoa, Florence, and Naples. The Port of Saint-Tropez, oil on canvas, 1901Signac loved sailing and began to travel in 1892, sailing a small boat to almost all the ports of France, to Holland, and around the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople, basing his boat at St. Tropez, which he "discovered". From his various ports of call, Signac brought back vibrant, colourful watercolors, sketched rapidly from nature. From these sketches, he painted large studio canvases that are carefully worked out in small, mosaic-like squares of color, quite different from the tiny, variegated dots previously used by Seurat. Signac himself experimented with various media. As well as oil paintings and watercolours he made etchings, lithographs, and many pen-and-ink sketches composed of small, laborious dots. The neo-impressionists influenced the next generation: Signac inspired Henri Matisse and Andr?? Derain in particular, thus playing a decisive role in the evolution of Fauvism. As president of the Societe des Artistes Ind??pendants from 1908 until his death, Signac encouraged younger artists (he was the first to buy a painting by Matisse) by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists.  Related Paintings of Paul Signac :. | Forest near St. Tropez | Railway junctiRailway junction near Bois Colombeson near Bois-Colombes | the jun ction at bois colombes opus 130 | Impression | Impression |
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El Lissitzky
Russian 1890-1941 He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th century graphic design. El Lissitzky's entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change, later summarized with his edict, "das zielbewußte Schaffen" (goal-oriented creation). A Jew, he began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia, a country that was undergoing massive change at the time and that had just repealed its anti-semitic laws. When only 15 he started teaching; a duty he would stay with for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic media, spreading and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works ?? a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany.
George Frederick watts,O.M.,R.A.
1817-1904 English painter and sculptor. He studied at the Royal Academy and in Italy, where he developed an enthusiasm for Renaissance painting and Greek sculpture that greatly influenced his work. He executed several decorative commissions, including his large fresco Justice (Lincoln's Inn, London), modeled after Raphael's School of Athens. Many of his allegorical pictures are in the Tate Gallery, London. The National Portrait Gallery, London, contains a large collection of his portraits of eminent contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum has his Ariadne in Naxos.
Francesco Trevisani
Italian Rococo Era Painter , Capodistria 1656-1746 Rome was an Italian painter, active in the period called either early Rococo or late Baroque (barochetto) Born in Capodistria (modern Koper, then part of the Republic of Venice), he was the son of Antonio Trevisani, an architect, by whom he was instructed in the first rudiments of design. He then studied in Venice under Antonio Zanchi. He moved to Rome, where he remained until his death, in 1678. His brother, Angelo Trevisani remained a prominent painter in Venice. In Rome, he was supported by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. He was strongly influenced by Carlo Maratta, as it is manifest in his masterpiece, the frescoes in San Silvestro in Capite (1695-1696). In this commission, he worked alongside Giuseppe Chiari and Ludovico Gimignani. In Rome, he was favored with the patronage of Cardinal Chigi. Chigi employed him in several considerable works, and recommended him to the protection of Pope Clement XI, who not only commissioned him to paint one of the Prophets in San Giovanni Laterano, but engaged him to decorate the cupola of the cathedral in Urbino. There he represented, in fresco, allegories of the four Quarters of the World, in which he displayed much invention and ingenuity. He was employed by the Duke of Modena, in copying the works of Correggio, Parmigianino, and also painted in Brunswick, Madrid, Munich, Stockholm, and Vienna. He also shows Maratta's influence in the cartoons for baptismal chapel in St. Peter's Basilica, in the oval with Prophet Baruch in San Giovanni in Laterano, and in the Death of St. Joseph in Sant'Ignazio. Trevisani painted scenes from the Life of the Blessed Lucy of Narni in the church of Narni (1714-15).