The vibrancy of French IMPRESSIONISM was largely to do with the separation of colour leading to the viewer experiencing  the immediacy of blending the hues themselves optically. Around the 1860s this was taken to the “Nth” degree by the post impressionists known as the POINTILLISTS such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac who reduced the colours to even smaller dots producing the most ethereal and mesmerising pictures with a quality of light and stillness.

Some 20 years later a similar genre was evolving in Italy with the DIVISIONIST artists including Giovanni Segantini, Gaetano Previati, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà. Although they separated colour to the same degree the technique they used was to apply the individual colours as threads – sometimes only a few fibres wide. They often cut away much of their paint brushes to achieve these minute lines of colour. Their reason for employing threads of colour was to bring light and especially movement to their art.   In the same way textile artists can use lines and threads of colour help to bring vibrancy and movement to their work

References :
Publication -  Radical Light – Italy′s Divisionist Painters (National Gallery London) 
by Simonetta Fraquelli (Author), Giovanna Ginex (Author), Vivian Greene (Author), Aurora Scotti (Author), Tobia Bezzola (Author), Linda Schadler (Author)
Exhibition - Radical Harmony - Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists   (National Gallery London)
until 8th February 2026