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| Georges Seurat |
| 1859-1891 |
| European Artist |
| Seurat was born in Paris, France. In 1975 he attended the municipal school of sculptor Justin Lequien. From March 1878 to November 1879 he was enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Seurat was interested in theories of vision and color. His name is forever affiliated with Pointillism, the nineteenth-century French school of Post-Impressionism that he founded. By meticulously applying various degrees of colored "dots" to the canvas, Pointillism produced the impression of changes in light, breaking down colors into their constituent hues and applying them side by side on canvas. In Seurat's method, which he also called peinture optique, colors placed next to each other were intended to mix in the eye of the viewer and approximate the quality of natural light. In 1886 Seurat met mathematician and scientist Charles Henry. Vocal in his ideas about the interconnections between aesthetics and science, Henry influenced Seurat’s desire to logically control color and space and his later attempts to find methodical, scientific means of composition. |
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