Arthur Segal
(1875-1944) Painter

Born 13 July 1875 in Jassy (Iasi).
Died 23 June 1944 in London.

Arthur Segal oil painting in the Foundation's collection

Arthur Segal was a Romanian Jewish artist who went to Switzerland and lived at Ascona, then joined TRISTAN TZARA and the JANCO brothers in Zurich in 1916, and with them was one of the founding members of the Dada Movement.

In later years, Segal painted in a more conventional, and highly sensitive, style which could be called a form of ‘hyper-realism’. At that period he experimented with having only one point on the canvas in perfect focus, with the rest of the image slightly fuzzy, and was fascinated by the vagaries of optics. The Foundation has two woodcuts which he did in Ascona in 1915, and a late oil painting from the 1940s (right). In the Foundation’s library, we also have a signed copy of an early pamphlet published by Segal on the use of light in painting (written in German, see below).

Signed pamphlet on the use of light in painting