Georges Seurat's 162nd Birthday, December 2

Todays Google animated Doodle celebrates French painter Georges Seurat, who captured the natural qualities of light in scenes of contemporary Parisian life with his signature painting techniques known as Pointillism and Divisionism.

Seurat’s innovative methods gave rise to the school of Neo-Impressionism, an avant-garde 19th century movement that forever changed the course of modern art.

Georges-Pierre Seurat (born December 2, 1859, Paris, France—died March 29, 1891, Paris) was a French post-Impressionist artist.

He is best known for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism as well as pointillism.

While less famous than his paintings, his conté crayon drawings have also garnered a great deal of critical appreciation.

Seurat's artistic personality was compounded of qualities which are usually supposed to be opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.

His large-scale work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.

Seurat was born in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878-1879. His teacher was a disciple of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Young Seurat was strongly influenced by Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya.

After a year of military service at Brest, Seurat exhibited his drawing Aman-Jean at the official Salon in 1883.

Panels from his painting Bathing at Asnieres were refused by the Salon the next year, so Seurat and several other artists founded the Societe des Artistes Independants.

His famous canvas Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte was the centerpiece of an exhibition in 1886.

By then Seurat was spending his winters in Paris, drawing and producing one large painting each year, and his summers on France's northern coast.

In his short life Seurat produced seven monumental paintings, 60 smaller ones, drawings, and sketchbooks.

He kept his private life very secret, and not until his sudden death in Paris on March 29, 1891, did his friends learn of his mistress, who was the model for his painting Young Woman Holding a Powder Puff.

Georges-Pierre Seurat founder of the 19th-century French school of Neo-Impressionism whose technique for portraying the play of light using tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colours became known as Pointillism.

Using this technique, he created huge compositions with tiny, detached strokes of pure colour too small to be distinguished when looking at the entire work but making his paintings shimmer with brilliance. Works in this style include Une Baignade (1883-84) and Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte (1884-86).

A French painter who was a leader in the neo-impressionist movement of the late 19th century, Georges Seurat is the ultimate example of the artist as scientist.

He spent his life studying color theories and the effects of different linear structures.

His 500 drawings alone establish Seurat as a great master, but he will be remembered for his technique called Pointillism or Divisionism, which uses small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create subtle changes in form.

Il Doodle animato Google di oggi celebra il pittore Francese Georges Seurat, che ha catturato le qualità naturali della luce nelle scene della vita parigina contemporanea con le sue tecniche pittoriche distintive note come Puntinismo e Divisionismo.

Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 dicembre 1859 - 29 marzo 1891) fu un artista post-impressionista Francese.

Artista profondamente interessato allo studio dei problemi teorici legati alla ricerca visiva e formale, Seurat sviluppò la tecnica detta poi Pointillisme-Puntinismo.

Sebbene meno famoso dei suoi dipinti, i suoi disegni a pastello hanno anche suscitato un grande apprezzamento critico.

La personalità artistica di Seurat era composta da qualità che di solito dovrebbero essere opposte e incompatibili: da un lato, la sua sensibilità estrema e delicata, dall'altro, la passione per l'astrazione logica e una precisione quasi matematica della mente.

La sua opera su larga scala, A Sunday Afternoon on the La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), cambiò la direzione dell'arte moderna, avviando il Neo-Impressionismo ed è una delle icone della pittura della fine del XIX secolo.