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 :. | morning mist | Le Moulin Holiandais a Edam | The Pine, | flood at the pont royal | Seasid |
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Bicci di Lorenzo
Italian, 1373-1452,was an Italian painter and sculptor, active in Florence. He was born in Florence in 1373, the son of the painter, Lorenzo di Bicci, whose workshop he joined. He married in 1418, and in 1424 was registered in the Guild of Painters at Florence. His son, Neri di Bicci was also a painter and took over the family workshop. Bicci di Lorenzo died in Florence in 1452 and was buried in Santa Maria del Carmine. Following early work - largely frescoes - in collaboration with his father, he received a number of important commissions, including, according to Vasari, from the Medici for a cycle of frescoes of Illustrious Men for the Palazzo Medici. For the Opera del Duomo, he painted frescoes of the apostles. And he painted a Saints Cosmas and Damian and frescoes representing the dedication of the church itself for Sant'Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. His best paintings are now thought to be the Madonna in Trono now in the National Gallery at Parma, the Three stories of St Nicholas triptych in the cathedral of Fiesole, and a Nativity in the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri in Florence.