Henri-Edmond Cross (1856–1910) is one of the leading exponents of French Neo-Impressionism. With his friend and fellow painter Paul Signac, he discovered the Côte d’Azur for painting. Situated between the Impressionists around Claude Monet and the forerunners of Expressionism around Henri Matisse, his oeuvre marks a crucial step along the path toward establishing color as an autonomous pictorial means and, by extension, toward abstraction. He was celebrated early on as a pioneer of modernism in Germany.
In collaboration with the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny, the Museum Barberini presented the first retrospective devoted to Cross at a German museum. In addition to his prominent role within the Neo-Impressionist movement, the exhibition examined his influence on later developments within the French avant-garde, illuminating Cross’s significance as a major pioneer of twentieth-century painting.
As part of the "Color and Light : The Neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross" exhibition, Helene Bailly Gallery will lend Henri-Edmond Cross's "Pérouse, le Campanile de Santa Maria Nuova" to the Barberini Museum in Potsdam.
