Georges-Pierre Seurat (*2 December 1859 in Paris; † 29 March 1891 Paris) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. He is best known for developing the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was the third child of Ernestine Faivre and Antoine-Chrysostome Seurat. He was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris into a middle-class family. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878. He then studied with Henri Lehman. Together with artists such as Paul Signac, Albert Dubois-Pilllet and Odilon Redon, he was responsible for the Salon des Indépendents, which they established as an alternative to the state-sponsored salon exhibitions.
Seurat's Conté colored pencil drawings are less famous than his paintings, but they have also garnered much critical acclaim. Seurat's artistic personality combined characteristics that should normally be opposed and incompatible: on the one hand his extreme and delicate sensitivity, on the other hand a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of the mind. His large-format work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) changed the direction of modern art through the initiation of Neo-Impressionism and is one of the icons of painting of the late 19th century.
Seurat is also praised for his technique of pointillism, which almost scientifically breaks down the color surface into dots of color that blend from a distance.