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The paintings have been chosen from those that remain from the artistic production of Signori: they date from 1934 to 1946. During the occupation of Paris, the artist’s studio in Rue Huyghens, in the heart of Montparnasse, was first suppressed during the gestapo persecutions, then sacked and destroyed. Everything that they found there, comprising artworks and papers representing twenty years of work, have been completely lost to us, and it was only possible to save a few pieces that were in friends’ houses, like the nude that was displayed in the Salon des Tuileries.

Many of these paintings were painted at the accademy of André Lhote, where Signori went in the afternoons, others at the Accademie Ranson where Malfray and Bissière taught, and which Signori frequented in the mornings. The Accademy meant little to Signori, but afforded the opportunity for contact with artists of a high level (they say that in these paintings one can see, through the skill of the craft, works that deepen the expressive possibility of the colour), but also, and above all, the possibility to stay warm and to have a model.

André Lhote wrote of him: "He is a sculptor and a painter, concious of the specific requirements of the two artforms. When he paints he abandons all preoccupation with modelling and interests himself only in the game of the pure elements that constitute painting: line and colour.