Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism follows Impressionism. The artists involved were influenced by Impressionism although their work shares few similarities. Disinterested in recording light and color phenomena, Post-Impressionism is characterized by:
bright color, sharp, often outlined edges. In pursuit of individual goals, theories, and interests, they don't work or exhibit together.

CEZANNE

His earliest works, from his first days in Paris, are expressionistic, with their impasto paint surface, broad use of the palette knife, and brooding intensity. He took out his frustrations on the canvas. In the early 1870s, he experimented with Impressionism. He tried to combine the principles of light and air-based art with a more structured pictorial style. After that, he delved into Classicism, with more balanced and formal compositions. Toward the end of his life, he was at his most daring, reducing architecture and figures to geometric forms and paving the way for Cubism.
Cézanne creates depth by replacing the traditional use of value differences with his particular brand of color modulations. Normally, depth is portrayed through modeling: the painter uses differences in value (lightness and darkness) to express the physical relief of the model being depicted.Adding white or black to a color diminishes its intensity, which as a painting term means the degree of saturation or purity of color tone. When there are no contaminating inclusions of black or white to a color, it is in its purest hue, which means it is at its highest saturation and its greatest intensity (in this restricted painting sense of the term). In modeling, one would use variations in value to show relief: changing the amounts of shading indicates the positions of objects in reference to a light source, and creates the visual dimension of depth. Cézanne, however, uses the oppositions of warm and cool tones, in some cases, to represent light and shadow or varying distances of objects.
  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901

Famous as an artist and as an aristocrat in Paris, Toulouse-Lautrec traveled and associated with the intellectuals of the era. Feeling physically grotesque, Lautrec removed himself from a traditional life in favor of the Parisian underworld from which his unromantic contemporary subjects were drawn. He painted social taboos and sordid truths of Parisian life in a straightforward unsentimental manner .He was influenced by Japanese prints and the Impressionist, Degas.

PAUL GAUGUIN

A postimpressionist painter, whose lush color, flat two-dimensional forms, and subject matter helped form the basis of modern art.
Gauguin's bold experiments in coloring led directly to the 20th-century fauvist style in modern art. His strong modeling influenced the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch and the later expressionist school
Gauguin's art has all the appearance of a flight from civilisation, of a search for new ways of life, more primitive, more real and more sincere. His break away from a solid middle-class world, abandoning family, children and job, his refusal to accept easy glory and easy gain are the best-known aspects of Gauguin's fascinating life and personality. This picture, also known asTwo women on the beach, was painted in 1891, shortly after Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti. During his first stay there (he was to leave in 1893, only to return in 1895 and remain until his death), Gauguin discovered primitive art, with its flat forms and the violent colors belonging to an untamed nature. And then, with absolute sincerity, he transferred them onto canvas.

VAN GOGH

Vincent van Gogh is perhaps one of the most famous artists of all time. He was born in Holland in 1853 and died in France in 1890 from the mental illness which plagued him throughout his life. During his life time, van Gogh produced approximately two thousand works of art including the iconic Starry Night.In his early artistic years, van Gogh painted people's daily lives in a muted palette of dark colors, producing work which is almost unrecognizable to people familiar with his later work. In 1886, van Gogh traveled to Paris, where he met several Impressionist artists and was heavily influenced by their work. He traveled to other parts of France as well for the next four years, spending time with other artists and in and out of medical clinics, seeking treatment for the mental illness which ultimately led him to shoot himself.

The later work of van Gogh is often classified as Post-Impressionist, because although it uses the rich palette and strong brush strokes of Impressionism, it also carries other distinct characteristics. Like other Post-Impressionists, van Gogh distorted forms, painted more unpleasant subjects, used peculiar color choices, and expressed his emotions through his artwork.

POINTILLISM

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which a lot of tiny dots are combined to form a picture. The reason for doing pointillism instead of a picture with physical mixing is that, supposedly, physically mixing colors dulls them. When two colors are right next to each other your eye mixes them in a process called, "optical mixing." Using optical mixing rather than physical mixing can create a brighter picture.It is very similar to Divisionism, except that where Divisionism is concerned with color theory, Pointillism is more focused on the specific style of brushwork used to apply the paint.




Chronological Listing of Pointillist Painters


Camille Pissarro 1830-1903 Caribbean/French Painter Camille Pissarro: Girl with a Stick, 1881
Art Prints
Gaetano Previati 1852-1920 Italian Painter Paolo and Francesca
Art Prints
Angelo Morbelli 1853-1919 Italian Painter Fragilina
Art Prints
Charles Angrand 1854-1926 French Painter Le Pont De Pierre, Rouen
Art Prints
Hippolyte Petitjean 1854-1929 French Painter Reclining Nude
Art Prints
Henri-Edmond Cross 1856-1910 French Painter The Iles D'Or (The Iles D'Hyeres, Var)
Art Prints
Maximilien Luce 1858-1941 French Painter
Giovanni Segantini 1858-1899 Italian Painter The Angel of Life
Art Prints
Georges Seurat 1859-1891 French Painter Georges Seurat: Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte
Art Prints
Theo van Rysselberghe 1862-1926 Belgian Painter L'Ile Du Levant, Vu Du Cap Benat
Art Prints
Paul Signac 1863-1935 French Painter Paul Signac: Venice, 1909
Art Prints
Georges Lemmen 1865-1916 Belgian Painter The Beach at Heist, 1891-92
Art Prints
Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo 1868-1907 Italian Painter Washing in the Sun, 1905
Art Prints
Lucie Cousturier 1870-1925 French Painter/Writer