Post-Impressionism and Symbolism

After Impressionism, artists went their separate ways – toward structure, color, emotion and dream.

Post-Impressionism is an umbrella term for artists who started from Impressionism but wanted more. Cézanne built the picture from geometric forms, Seurat from dots based on color theory, van Gogh from emotion and swirling brushstrokes, and Gauguin from flat, symbolic fields of color.

At the same time the Symbolists sought the hidden and the spiritual: dreams, death, eroticism and myth. Munch painted anxiety and love, Klimt gold and ornament, and Art Nouveau flourished in Vienna, Brussels and Paris.

In the Nordic countries the 1890s were a golden age. Artists who had studied in Paris came home and painted atmospheric landscapes, Nordic summer nights and folk life in a spirit of National Romanticism.