Roger Fry postimpressionist painter
Postimpressionist British painter, Roger Fry (1866-1934). (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Post-Impressionism (sometimes called Postimpressionism) was a significant French art trend that evolved between 1886 and 1905. Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat led the movement. Post-Impressionism was a reaction to Impressionism’s naturalistic light and colour. Post-Impressionism covers the work of Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism.

In 1906, Roger Fry coined the term Post-Impressionism. Art News (15 October 1910) characterised Othon Friesz as a “post-impressionist leader” in a review of the Salon d’Automne and an ad for the show The Post-Impressionists of France. Roger Fry repeated the phrase three weeks later when he organised the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists.

The Starry Night by Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh, “The Starry Night,” 1889 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Post-Impressionists kept utilising vibrant colours, impasto (thick paint), and painting from life, but emphasised geometric forms, distorted forms for emotional effect, and used unnatural or changed colours.

Overview

Post-Impressionists disapproved of Impressionist paintings’ triviality and lack of structure. They disagreed on the way ahead. Georges Seurat and his followers used pointillism or coloured dots. Paul Cézanne wanted to “create Impressionism strong and enduring, like museum art” He did this by simplifying objects while preserving Impressionist colours. Camille Pissarro explored Neo-Impressionism in the 1880s and 1890s. Dissatisfied with romantic Impressionism, he explored pointillism, which he dubbed scientific Impressionism, before reverting to pure Impressionism in his final decade. Vincent van Gogh employed bold colours and brushstrokes to express his emotions.

Post-Impressionist artists exhibited together but disagreed on a trend. Seurat approached colour and composition scientifically. All these artists prioritised harmony and structural organisation over reality.

Defining Post-Impressionism

Roger Fry used the term in 1906 and 1910 to label an exhibition of modern French painters: Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Three weeks before Fry’s presentation, art critic Frank Rutter used the term Post-Impressionist in Art News of 15 October 1910. He called Othon Friesz a “post-impressionist leader” and advertised the show The Post-Impressionists of France.
Fry’s display featured mostly younger artists than Impressionists. Fry said: “Post-Impressionism was the most nebulous and noncommittal word I could offer these painters. This stated their timeframe related to Impressionism.” John Rewald’s Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin covered 1886-1892. (1956). Rewald deemed this a continuation of his 1946 History of Impressionism and noted that Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse would follow. This chapter covers various Impressionist-derived art trends from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rewald focused on van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Redon. He studied their relationships and the creative circles they frequented (or opposed).

  • Neo-Impressionism: ridiculed by contemporary art critics as well as artists as Pointillism; Seurat and Signac would have preferred other terms: Divisionism, for example
  • Cloisonnism: a short-lived term introduced in 1888 by the art critic Édouard Dujardin, was to promote the work of Louis Anquetin and was later also applied to contemporary works of his friend Émile Bernard
  • Synthetism: another short-lived term coined in 1889 to distinguish recent works of Gauguin and Bernard from that of more traditional Impressionists exhibiting with them at the Café Volpini.
  • Pont-Aven School: implying little more than that the artists involved had been working for a while in Pont-Aven or elsewhere in Brittany.
  • Symbolism: a term highly welcomed by vanguard critics in 1891 when Gauguin dropped Synthetism as soon as he was acclaimed as the leader of Symbolism in painting.

Furthermore, in his introduction to Post-Impressionism, Rewald opted for a second volume featuring Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau “le Douanier”, Les Nabis and Cézanne, as well as the Fauves, the young Picasso and Gauguin’s last trip to the South Seas; it was to expand the period covered at least into the first decade of the 20th century—yet this second volume remained unfinished.

Sources

Wikipedia contributors. (2022, July 23). Post-Impressionism. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:48, July 23, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Post-Impressionism&oldid=1100007215

Advertisements

Books on Design History

More on Design Movements

  • ‘Moderne’ Style of Art Deco Popular in the 20s & 30s

    ‘Moderne’ Style of Art Deco Popular in the 20s & 30s

    Moderne was a decorative style that was mostly about how things looked on the outside. Moderne architecture was most noticeable in public buildings like skyscrapers and movie theatres. Postmodernism later brought back a lot of the styles that were part of the moderne movement.Read More →

  • “International Style” Architecture of the Modern Movement

    “International Style” Architecture of the Modern Movement

    Alfred H. Barr Jr. coined the term in 1931 in conjunction with Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s 1932 “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” (along with the accompanying book International Style: Architecture Since 1922) at the New York Museum of Modern Art, where Barr was director.Read More →

  • Dada Art Movement – Making Mischief

    Dada Art Movement – Making Mischief

    As a designer, I am passionate about the history of art and their influence on ‘visual design.’  In art history, Dada is the artistic movement that preceded Surrealism, it began in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916 by a group of mostly painters and painters.  Dada artworks challenged the preconceived notions of what art meant.  Many Dadaists felt…

  • Post-Impressionism – a concise guide

    Post-Impressionism – a concise guide

    Post-Impressionism (sometimes called Postimpressionism) was a significant French art trend that evolved between 1886 and 1905. Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat led the movement. Post-Impressionism was a reaction to Impressionism’s naturalistic light and colour. Post-Impressionism covers the work of Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism.Read More…

  • The Origins of Punk

    The Origins of Punk

    The realities of dissatisfied working-class urban teenagers with little hope of a job, housing, or a meaningful future shaped Punk in the mid-1970s. Read More →

  • What is Pop Art?

    What is Pop Art?

    Pop Art was never a cohesive movement. Instead, it inched its way up the international art scene, starting in the mid-1950s, as the invention of artists throughout Europe and the United States, artists who were often working independently and in isolation from each other.Read More →

  • Futurism – a rejection of the past

    Futurism – a rejection of the past

    Futurism was an art movement consisting of painting, sculpture, and literature that flourished from 1909.  It was established by Italian, poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and inspired by Cubism.  Marinetti coined the term Futurism for the art movement that he founded.   He intended it as a celebration of modernity and a rejection of romance and sentiment,…

  • Neue Sachlichkeit – Design Term

    Neue Sachlichkeit – Design Term

    Neue Sachlichkeit was a term coined in 1923 by Gustav Hartlaub, director of the Kunsthalle, Mannheim, as the title of an exhibition he organised to demonstrate the progress of post-war painting in Germany.Read More →

  • Swedish Modern – Scandinavian respect for design

    Swedish Modern – Scandinavian respect for design

    In the 1930s, when modern Swedish design was becoming more well-known in Europe and the United States, this term became popular. However, it peaked in the 1950s. It combined many of Modernism’s characteristics with natural materials like wood and Scandinavian respect for craftsmanship.Read More →

More design articles

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.