La Dogana, Venise 1923

Paul Signac painted 'La Dogana, Venise' with oil paint, carefully building up the image with tiny, individual dots of colour. It’s all about process, right? A step-by-step approach, like knitting or mosaic work. What really grabs me is the texture. It’s like he’s built this whole scene out of tiny mosaic tiles. The surface shimmers with these little touches of contrasting colors - pinks, greens and blues all dancing together. Check out the cloud formations above the Dogana; you can see the individual strokes, which create this kind of swirling, almost dreamlike effect. Signac was a contemporary of Seurat, but I see a kinship here with some of the later Fauvist painters like Vlaminck, who also experimented with heightened colour. This piece is a conversation, a dialogue between different ways of seeing and painting, always open to new interpretations.