Ideals & Characteristics of Post-Impressionism
As the term suggests, Post-Impressionism was an art movement that emerged as a reaction and response to Impressionism art style. This new style developed during the late 19th century (1886-1905) and rejected the Impressionist concepts of rendering natural light and spontaneous moments.
Manipulation of color, use of geometrical shapes were common characteristics of this style of painting. The brush strokes had their own identity and it resembled the inner emotions of the artist through patterns and broken geometricity of shapes instead of a mere depiction of natural light & shade. It was more like a geometrical interpretation of the subjects they painted. While organizing an exhibition, in 1906, the English artist and art critic Roger Fry coined this term -”Post-Impressionism” for the works of late 19th century painters like late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except Van Gogh started as Impressionists and later abandoned the style and concept. They were more preoccupied with defining form and creating symbolic representations which were attributed towards abstraction. The use of short broken brush strokes were used to suggest the shimmering light in paintings. These optical formulas and experimentations slowly led way to minimal dot-like application of contrasting colors which seemed to blend from a distance and form a dominant color. Later this technique got a theoretical name as Pointillism which was soon adapted by artists and it became a major movement of the 20th century.
As an extension and rejection of the Impressionist ideologies, Post-Impressionist paintings were more textured, bold and use of unnatural colors can be also seen as means of subjective expression. Slowly this movement paved its way to the major art movements of 20th century modernism which sought to evoke emotions through color and line.
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