Pointillism - painting techniques

One of the painting techniques raising much controversy is the 19-th century pointillism or divisionism, as they used to call it. The rise up of pointillism occurred in the context of another popular and opposed technique, that of non-primary colors obtained from mixed pigment in the palette or out of a tube.

The technique consists in performing a traditional brushwork of mixed colors, but unlike other techniques, based on the additive color theory, and not on the subtractive color one. In other words, pointillism uses small dots in primary colors perceived from a distance by the eye as brighter and purer color mixtures. The explanation resides in that light mixing offers a brighter effect than color mixing.

Painters who used pointillism technique

One of the most popular representatives of pointillism was Georges Seurat, the creator of La Parade and Grand Jatte, great examples of pointillism. Seurat is also famous for his conflict with Paul Gauguin, who sarcastically referred to his pointillist ideas as to "petit-point" technique.

Divisionism

Divisionism is the base concept for nowadays CRT and LCD computer monitors and color television receivers. Dots in these devices are red, green and blue.

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