Jean Metzinger

The Section d'Or , also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, was a collective of painters and critics associated with an offshoot of Cubism known as Orphism . Based in the Paris suburb of Puteaux, they were active from 1912 to around 1914, coming to prominence in the wake of their... controversial showing at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911. The movement began with an exhibition at the Galerie La Boetie in Paris in 1912, which was also accompanied by publication of the treatise Du Cubisme by Metzinger and Gleizes. In addition to featuring works by the Duchamp brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon,Jacques Villon and Marcel Duchamp, other exhibitors included artists such as Archipenko, Roger de La Fresnaye, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Jean Marchand and Francis Picabia, among others. The opening address was given by Guillaume Apollinaire. The group's title was suggested by Jacques Villon, after reading a 1910 translation of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura by Joséphin Péladan.
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Neo-impressionism was coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s greatest masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its... appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France’s modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of neo-impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced neo-impressionists’ characterization of their own contemporary art. Pointillism technique is often mentioned, because it was the dominant technique in the beginning. During the emergence of neo-impressionism, Seurat and his followers strived to refine the impulsive and intuitive artistic mannerisms of impressionism. Neo-impressionists used disciplined networks of dots in their desire to instill a sense of organization and permanence. In further defining the movement, Seurat incorporated the recent explanation of optic and color perceptions.
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Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued... beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain. Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, and Georges Braque . The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction.
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Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. By requiring the viewer to combine the colors optically instead of physically mixing pigments, divisionists believed they were... achieving the maximum luminosity scientifically possible. Georges Seurat founded the style around 1884 as chromoluminarism, drawing from his understanding of the scientific theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and Charles Blanc, among others. Divisionism developed along with another style, pointillism, which is defined specifically by the use of dots of paint and does not necessarily focus on the separation of colors. Divisionism developed in nineteenth century painting as artists discovered scientific theories of vision which encouraged a departure from the tenets of Impressionism, which at that point had been well-developed. The scientific theories and rules of color contrast that would guide composition for divisionists placed the movement of Neo-Impressionism in contrast with Impressionism, which is characterized by the use instinct and intuition.
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