Jean Metzinger – Paysage Bleu (1906-07) – oil on canvas – 78x66cm

Apart from its obvious attractive qualities, what I find most striking about this painting is the clarity of its art historical reference connecting Pointillism and  Post-Impressionism with abstraction, op-art, and just about everything else that came after. At a time when all the modernist art movements were just beginning, the artist is in his early twenties, absorbing all the new exciting influences around him and is at a peak of drive, energy, and poetical inspiration.