Post-Impressionism is a movement that started in France and flourished throughout the rest of Europe between 1880 to the early 1900s and represented both an extension of Impressionism and at the same time, it was also a rejection of its limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by an art critic to describe the work of late 19th-century painters such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and other contemporaries who painted with this unique style.
All of these painters, with the exception of van Gogh, were French, and most of them started out as Impressionists (note that Cézanne was mentioned in an earlier blog post on Impressionism). These artists gradually broke away from Impressionistic techniques and each sought to create his own highly personal art and style. The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, as did the Impressionists, but they painted mainly in isolation. Cézanne spent his time in Aix-en-Provence in southern France; Paul Gauguin left his family and moved to Tahiti in 1891; van Gogh painted in the countryside at Arles.
Impressionism, according to the Post-Impressionists was still an objective view and recording of nature, albeit through the experimental use of colour and light painting techniques. The Post-Impressionists aspired to a more ambitious expression, exploring the art of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour and lines. The work of these painters paved the way for several trends in early 20th-century modernism.
In summary, this art movement sought to break away from a naturalistic approach and moved towards the two major movements of early 20th-century art that followed: Expressionism, Cubism and Fauvism, all of which sought to evoke emotion through challenging techniques using colour and line.
Henri Rousseau, Le centenaire de l'indépendance, 1892
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