Yesterday we visited the Seurat Exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. It must be the first time we’ve been to an exhibition not at the weekend or on a public holiday. It was still well visited, but was a more relaxed experience without the usual press of people all vying for room around the exhibits. It is the first time in 30 years that there has been a major exhibition devoted to Seurat in Germany.
Seurat is considered to be the founder of the pointillism style of painting. As the introduction to the exhibition states:
He meticulously composed his works from countless small spots of paint arranged in juxtaposition; these spots blend in the viewer’s retina, giving rise to exceptional worlds of color. No other pictorial subject is able to tell so much about Seurat’s art as the figure in the landscape. Light-dark contrasts swirl about and accentuate his figures, lending them an unreal presence.
In the exhibition you are able to get up close to the paintings, so that you can see the individual dots. They are really surprising small. It must have taken literally hours to produce even the small studies for one of his final works of art.
The exhibition shows various studies either in conté pencil on paper or oil on canvas for both A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnières. The interesting thing about all these studies and paintings is that there are almost no lines drawn on them. All the shapes and forms as produced either with blocks of shading or colour.
RECLINING MAN: STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES
RAINBOW: STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES
FINAL STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES
I was quite fascinated by this painting – the anchors only delineated by the changing colour of the dots of colour; the many different colours used in the water; the colours of the sky. I could have spent ages looking at it.
THE CHANNEL AT GRAVELINES: EVENING
All images are press images from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt
