Paul Victor Jules Signac
French (1863-1935)
Born in Paris, France in 1863, painter Paul Victor Jules Signac decided to pursue an art career at the age of eighteen following a visit to an exhibit of Claude Monet’s work. Although he had completed a course of training in architecture, Signac had no formal art training and was largely self taught. An avid sailor, Signac traveled and painted the coasts of Europe and many French harbor cities. Known for his Neo-Impressionist and Pointillism style of painting, Signac and his contemporaries greatly influenced and inspired the next generation of painters.
Signac was one of the founders of the Societe des Artistes Independants with Georges Seurat, Odilon Redon and Albert Dubois-Pillet and was elected its President in 1905. He exhibited at the Artistes Independants, Les XX, Volpini Exhibition, Le Barc de Boutteville, La Libre Esthetique, Salon d’Automne, Salon des Independants, Salon des Cent and Salon des Tuileries, among others. Signac’s works are held in the collections of nearly every major museum worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Musee d’Orsay, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among others.