Yvonne Canu (French, 1921-2008)
Printemps

Yvonne Canu, born in 1921 was a French painter and followed the influences of the pointillists* such as Georges Seurat. Particularly it has been noted that she was strongly influenced by Seurat’s masterpiece L’ile de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte.) She belongs to an interesting trend of French twentieth-century artists who looked to and expanded upon the theories of so-called divisioniste* artists of the late 19th century. Canu’s analysis of colour hence follows many of the same trends and focuses on the mixture of primary, secondary, and tertiary tones on the palette and on the canvas. She studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs* in Paris and gained most acknowledgment for her work after the Second World War. Her work often depicts coastal and harbour scenes. Canu died in 2008.