Pointilism is a style of painting that is assigned to Neo-Impressionism and had its heyday between 1897 and 1910. It sees itself as a further development of Impressionism. The main characteristic of pointilism are paintings designed with dots, preferred colors are oil paints. The name is derived from the French verb pointiller, which means "to draw with dots".

The interrupted areas of color make pointillist paintings appear light, airy, and give the desired impression of impermanence. People tried to show snapshots as realistically as possible and used only pure colors in pointilism. The painting style makes use of additive color mixing. Only at a certain distance do the individual dots blend into areas and the human eye recognizes the representation in its entirety. The most famous representatives are the French artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who were also involved with other styles in addition to pointillism. Georges Seurat is considered the founder of the style, but the painter Camille Pissaro is no less famous. Vincent van Gogh also tried his hand at pointillism. One of his pointilist works is called "Interior of a Restaurant" and dates back to 1897.

Pointilist artists were often underestimated by their contemporaries. Their painting was wrongly dismissed as childish. Today, art historians hold the view that modernism would not have been possible at all without Pointilism.