Antibes. Les tours

In the late 1880s Signac moved away from the improvised and irregular brushstrokes of the Impressionists to concentrate instead on a more scientific approach to painting, one in which the analytical study of color and a more controlled application of pigment became key factors. By 1906, Signac had loosened his brushwork, freeing himself from the strict confines of the pointillist theories that he and Seurat had pursued almost twenty years earlier. The bold and expressive brushstrokes which enliven the surface of Antibes. Les tours are typical of the artist's later work. Each brushstroke has been broadened to create small rectangles, each regularly divided by the light color of the ground, thus emphasizing the specific hues. John House has noted:

Signac adopted a larger brushstroke, and began to work in mosaic-like blocks of paint, placed separately on the white-primed canvas, and sometimes at an angle to suggest directional movement. The priming is often left visible around the touches, and gives the painting a luminosity, alongside the richness of its colour (J. House, Post-Impressionism, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1979, p. 140).

In describing his process of color composition Signac wrote, "The painter, starting from the contrast of two colours, opposes, modifies and balances these elements on either side of the boundary between them, until he meets another contrast, and starts the process over again; so working from contrast to contrast, he covers the canvas" (P. Signac, D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, Paris, 1899).