The 6 most important WORKS of POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Post-impressionism is a French art style which peaked from the mid-1880s to the early 1900s. A few decades in which artists like Van Gogh or Cezanne they adopted and were leading figures of Post-Impressionism. A style in which the artists intensified the color to make it more vibrant and expressive, as well as distorting the shapes.

One use color and light to capture the emotions and feelings of the artist, giving space to subjectivity and more personal issues. Thus, the painting becomes a spiritual exercise in which the author reflects his most intimate concerns, experiences and feelings.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you a selection of the most important works of post-impressionism.

Index

1. The Starry Night (1889), Vincent Van Gogh, one of the Post-Impressionism works
2. The Dream (1910), Henri Rousseau
3. At the Moulin Rouge, (1895), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
4. The Yellow Christ (1889), Paul Gauguin
5. Bathers at Asnieres (1884), Georges Seurat
6. The Card Players (1890), Paul Cezanne

Although it is difficult to stay alone with a small group of works, there are a number of works post-impressionists who help us discover the most outstanding characteristics of this movement artistic. Among them stands out "The Starry Night" by Van Gogh.

This canvas is one of the best known of Van Gogh's artistic production and one of the Post-Impressionist works most iconic. Van Gogh painted this painting from memory representing the view he had from the window of his room on the psychiatric sanatorium Saint-Remy-de-Provence in France.

In his interest in astronomy, Van Gogh represented the Moon, Venus and various stars from this painting. In this work, the painter give up the impressionist method direct observation of nature to capture something more imaginative and personal, offering an original style.

The composition is divided into two stripes, an upper one in which the sky is represented and a lower one in which the landscape appears. The sky is starry and almost seems to vibrate and move. The landscape has hills and mountains, a cypress tree and the church tower breaking horizontality, a resource that guides the viewer's gaze towards the starry night.

An attention that also gets thanks to the colors used: white, yellow, green and blue of the sky; in addition to a thick concentric, energetic and pasty brushstroke that creates the sensation of continuous movement.

The dream It is another of the most important Post-Impressionism works. Another of the figures ascribed to post-impressionism is Henri Rousseau, a self-taught painter always in the circle of Impressionists, but who, due to his personal style, was more closely linked with later movements, being recognized as inspiration for surrealists for his original compositions, his dreamlike and naive air.

The dream It is a three-meter work in which Rousseu shows one of his most iconic themes: Jungle. A scene in which exotic animals and exuberant flora are not lacking. His freshness, honesty and spontaneity made him a unique figure.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, born into an aristocratic family and physically disabled due to a genetic disorder, he is another of the post-impressionist painters best known.

Attracted by the world of the Parisian nightlife of the late nineteenth century, Toulouse captured in his paintings typical scenes and characters like the dancers, singers and clients, among whom he was. The Moulin Rouge was one of the most popular venues and for which Toulouse painted several posters, revolutionizing the posters of the moment

In this work, Toulouse portrays a group of clients and friends, as well as dancers, including Mary Milton. The work uses color and line providing a almost cartoonish air to the characters, presenting the dancer in the foreground with a face in white and greenish tones, giving her an almost ghostly appearance.

Paul gauguin is another of the big names of post-impressionism. Like other painters trained in Impressionism, Gauguin he developed his own style, breaking with the stylistic bases of that movement and orienting itself towards our aesthetic challenges. Thus, Gauguin uses color to load it with symbolism, becoming a reference for future artists. avant-garde movements As the Symbolism.

On this canvas, Gauguin represents the crucifixion of Christ filling the table with various symbols, thus, the author locates the crucifixion in northern France, with a series of women praying, while a man flees, representing the desire of the late nineteenth century man to escape city life and regain life in the countryside, in the most primitive.

Seurat also created another of the great works of Post-Impressionism. This artist comes from Impressionism, but the execution technique is completely different.

Thus, in his work Bathers in Asnieres we find a typical theme of Impressionism, a scene from outdoor bathers, but made with a novel artistic style: the Pointillism. The scene is made up of infinite points of light and color made with a single brushstroke.

All figures are meticulously constructed and applying contemporary color theory to create a feeling of timelessness and the serenity of a summer day. Seurat's painting takes the working class as its protagonist as worthy of respect.

Paul cezanne He also began his pictorial career as an impressionist to take a different path and end up becoming the forerunner of avant-gardes such as the cubism. A painter who devoted himself to the reconstruction and recovery of volume and forms, fleeing from the dematerialization of forms, objects and figures that the impressionists made.

For it, Cezannegeometrize nature and the figures reducing them to simple geometric shapes such as cones, cylinders and spheres, also using wide spots of color to create that effect. The subjects are also reduced and made series of paintings in which the whole is treated in detail.

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• Denvir, B, (2001) Post-Impressionism, Destiny
• Rewald, John (2008) Post-Impressionism. From Van Gogh to Gauguin, Editorial Alliance
• VVAA, (2008) Post-Impressionism, Skira