Series Spotlight - Artistic Movements - Post-Impressionism

Emerging in France towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Post-Impressionism began as artists grew dissatisfied with the limitations of capturing superficial spontaneous moments as dictated by Impressionism. Artists sought to find depth and meaning in their art, valuing individual perception over objective reality and favouring symbolism to convey emotion. Post-Impressionism wasn’t a rejection of its predecessor but an extension, continuing the use of vivid colours and painting from life but rejecting the boundaries and distorting form or colour for expressive effect. A time of innovation and exploration, Post-Impressionist created some of the most iconic and famous pieces of art ever created. Post-Impressionism is a key precursor of all modern art, and Cézanne, in particular, whose art studied objects and perspective, was deemed by modern artists
‘the father of us all’.

Named mostly for its place in time, emerging after Impressionism, rather than any one single shared set of ideals or a rigid style, Post-Impressionism has a wide variety of styles, techniques and subjects associated with it. From depictions of Parisian life, to the French countryside to cityscapes, from portraits to still lifes to depictions of dreams, Post-Impressionist artists were all able to develop innovative techniques and styles; from Seurat’s Pointillism, a style adopted by other artists like Henri Edmond Cross or Paul Signac, to Rousseau’s Primitivism, from Gauguin’s Synthetism to van Gogh’s expressive aesthetics. Principles and touches of these styles are still visible in more recent works, including Anne Farrall Doyle’s energetic fields, Gerry Baptist’s vibrant colour palette, and even the expressive visible brushstrokes of S. de Armas and Vanita Comissiong’s works. Post-Impressionism, in all its varying styles and techniques, inspired and allowed for Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Fauvism and more; the impact, influence and inspiration of the Post-Impressionists can still be seen today, whether in intentional homages to the movement or in specific features from form
to palette to style.