Movement in French painting of the late 19th century, in reaction against the realism of Impressionism .
The Neo-Impressionists, led by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac , applied paint to canvas in dots of contrasting pigments, scientifically chosen so that adjacent dots would blend from a distance into a single colour. The technique is known as pointillism . Whereas the Impressionists captured the fugitive effects of colour and light, the Neo-Impressionists crystallized them into immobile monumentality.