Georges Seurat

Pioneered Pointillism, building images from meticulous dots of pure color that the viewer's eye is meant to mix at a distance. Seurat trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and grafted Impressionism onto the rigorous color theory he was reading in scientific journals — Chevreul, Rood, the chemistry of perception. The result was a slow, almost monastic painting practice; A Sunday on La Grande Jatte took two years and dozens of preparatory studies. He died of a sudden illness at thirty-one, leaving fewer than a dozen major canvases, but his method opened the door for Signac, the Fauves, and the early abstractionists who would push color free of representation entirely.