Paul Signac
La Lieutencance von Honfleur, 1897

Alfred Flechtheim and Paul Signac

The French painter and graphic artist Paul Signac is one of the major Neo-Impressionist and Pointillist artists. He became familiar with Impressionism through Claude Monet, among others. In 1884 he met Georges Seurat who had a strong influence on him. He closely examined the theory of colour and the effect of placing pure colours next to each other. In 1899 he published a trail-blazing thesis. Camille Pisarro and other artists joined forces with Seurat and Signac. Interrupted by long journeys at sea, Signac lived alternately in St. Tropez and Paris from 1892 onwards where he painted land and seascapes and harbour scenes in bold and brilliant colours.

Signac’s works were first seen by a broader public in Germany in 1898 when included in the first exhibition of Neo-Impressionism at the Galerie Keller & Reiner in Berlin. Karl Ernst Osthaus purchased works for the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, as did Hugo von Tschudi for the Nationalgalerie Berlin at the beginning of the 20^th century. Harry Graf Kessler, who organised the inaugural exhibition of the Großherzogliches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Weimar in 1903 entitled ‘Deutsche und französische Impressionisten und Neoimpressionisten’, was also in contact with Signac. The artist was acclaimed as a precursor of Modernism at the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne where 18 works were shown in the Neo-Impressionist Room.

Alfred Flechteim also showed works by Signac in the opening exhibition of his gallery in Düsseldorf in 1913. Just a few months later he loaned works for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Flechtheim acquired works for his gallery largely through David-Henry Kahnweiler – between September 1920 and September 1921 alone this amounted to 33 works. After an eight-year break, he exhibited Signac’s works once again from 1928 onwards. In 1937, several works by Signac were labelled ‘degenerate’ and confiscated by the Nazis.