Post Impressionism Art Movement
France, 1880 - 1920
Post-Impressionism Art Movement, History, Post-Impressionist Oil Paintings & Artists.
A movement led by Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat, and Gauguin, Post-Impressionism was a French art movement in which artists wanted to move away from the naturalism of Impressionism and its emphasis on the optical impact of light. They continued some Impressionist practices, like the use of pure color, but did so with a heavier hand. They also put an emphasis on more abstract qualities, like arresting and spontaneous color, and distortion of often geometric form.
Impressionism was one of the first hallmarks of modern art, and art was pushing toward scholarly motives and sources of creation. The Post-Impressionists were concerned with reintroducing structure to composition and with applying or communicating greater meaning to their compositions. Some of these ideas were shared, but this group of artists held onto their own individual thoughts and did not intend nor consider this as a cohesive movement.
The movement is not an art movement as such. It has its origins in the coining of the name by Roger Fry, an art critic, in 1910. He hoped to define the contrast between the established Impressionists and the upcoming crop of younger artists. Post-Impressionism was about what the artist wanted the viewer to see through their eyes and experience, not what the viewer saw on the canvas.
Whatever the root inspiration for each individual artist, this divergent group was cohesive in its abstraction. In a nutshell, all the Post-Impressionists were conceptual from earlier styles and from realism, and what they imagined, realized, and created would influence subsequent generations of abstract and expressionist artists.
Post-Impressionism's Fab Five.
Georges Seurat had a hypothesis that if the eye is looking at two or more colors at once, it will on its own combine them together to create the hue that defines the color of an object. From this, he, alongside Paul Signac, pioneered Pointillism, the art of painting with individual dots of color. This art enables artists to create a scene that is cohesive from afar but confusing up close.
Paul Gauguin was a master of light and dark values, rendered in vivid, unnatural colors in flat dimensions. He spent much of his career traveling, looking for nature and natural people unspoiled by industry and an overemphasis on social achievement. He visited many island nations, where he created his most famous works.
Vincent Van Gogh intends to impart his inner emotional world to the viewer. His work was distinguished by extraordinary brushstrokes and dark or arresting colors that jarred the viewer in some cases, depressed in others, and delighted in others. He did not shy away from what would have been viewed as unimportant or unsightly scenes, such as his room, laborers working, or his own self-portrait. It was this type of work that did have significance to him, that he thought held greater meaning than the trivial picnics of the Impressionist past.
Paul Cezanne’s primary interest was in the geometry of common structures. He was also interested in how the eye perceived shape and how optics worked in relation to perspective. Cezanne wanted to break down art into shapes such as "the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone" to investigate how those shapes were deciphered by human eyes. The work and thoughts of Cezanne were an early inspiration for Cubism.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec often frequented prostitutes and sometimes made the sordid, yet necessary, parts of their lives the subjects of his paintings. In one instance, The Medical Inspection, he paints in unflattering detail a line of prostitutes in shifts holding up their hems in anticipation of the exam.
How to identify Post-Impressionist Art Movement Oil Paintings?
A. The fundamental common trademark among all the different Post-Impressionist styles is heavy outlines. Artists ditched the fuzziness of Impressionist art and brought back the solid emphasis on the form. The subject matter did not differ from that found in Impressionist paintings.
B. Think about the unconstrained depictions of Impressionist paintings (a ballet dancer flaunting her moves) to the rigid poses of Post-Impressionism, and you’ll find that movement was replaced with stasis.
The Post-Impressionist movement had many other key and influential players, but these five were the key organizers of the movement, and their work inspired other artists of the time and made way for other techniques and movements in modern art.
Top Post-Impressionist artists: Charles Camoin, Henri-Edmond Cross, Marcel Duchamp, Maurice Prendergast, Paul Ranson, Henri Rousseau, Giovanni Segantini, Paul Sérusier, Theo Van Rysselberghe, and Charles Angrand.
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Famous Post Impressionism Art Movement Oil Painting Reproductions
Post Impressionism Art Movement Painters Biography & Painting Reproductions
- Anquetin, Louis
- Bonnard, Pierre
- Camarasa, Hermenegildo Anglada
- Cortes, Edouard
- Cézanne, Paul
- Gauguin, Paul
- La Touche, Gaston
- Lauge, Achille
- Lebasque, Henri
- Lebourg, Albert Charles
- Lemmen, Georges
- Loiseau, Gustave
- Luce, Maximilien
- Martin, Henri Jean Guillaume
- Mulhaupt, Frederick John
- Petitjean, Hippolyte
- Prendergast, Maurice
- Puigaudeau, Ferdinand Du
- Seurat, Georges Pierre
- Signac, Paul
- Sorolla, Joaquin
- Toulouse Lautrec, Henri De
- Van Gogh, Vincent
- Vuillard, Edouard
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