11 CHARACTERISTICS of SYMBOLISM in painting

The symbolism is a 19th century French artistic movement that uses symbols that show the inner world and knowledge, thus advocating creations of poetic content and far from the fierce materialism of industrialization. It is about finding and valuing those universal truths that are found within the human being.

Symbolism is an artistic and literary movement considered the most important of its time as it is a response to reality and a dreamlike quest and experimenting with drugs, drawing inspiration from the romanticism of the English poet William Blake (1757-1827). In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you the characteristics of symbolism in painting so you can distinguish the style and enjoy the best works of it.

The symbolism arose to late nineteenth century, a time in which positivism is questioned and intellectuals are unhappy, especially literary people. Some artists who opposed the customs and traditions of the bourgeoisie, approaching the art of a bohemian and free way, without rules.

In 1885 he was the poet Jean Moreás who spoke of this style for the first time in an article in which he mentioned how poetry had to be sought more in the symbolic than in the decadent. It will also be the writer Gustav Moreau who contributes to codify the symbolism in his work, as well as poets such as Charles Baudelaire, precursor of Parnassianism, decadence, modernism and symbolism, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

Painters, for their part, also they opposed the impositions of the impressionists, moving away from the observation of nature and the optical effects of light, to turn to literature. It is also a reaction to Realism and Naturalism, chronologically following Impressionism.

Imagination and romance instead of reason and reality, enhancing the inner life. Thus, and as Odilon Redon pointed out, it is about make the invisible world visible. The manifesto proclaimed that people, objects and natural elements could be used to represent a symbol, an idea or an emotion.

After these beginnings as a literary concept, symbolism also came to be assumed by the painters who rejected naturalism.

Symbolist painters began to create their works with non-modulated colors, flat and abstract shapes, in addition to resorting to wide and broad brushstrokes. Given the diversity of feelings and emotions, each painter resorted to different artistic techniques and different styles, sharing in common the exaltation of imagination and emotion.

Is about unite form and feeling, reality and subjectivity inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis. The representation of ideas and emotions led to the appearance of abstraction in art. Thus, the Symbolists had enormous interest in alchemy or theosophy as ways of invoking the spiritual and existential side.

Between the main characteristics of symbolism in painting stand out:

1. The esthetic symbolist has as inspiration lor dreamlike, the fantastic and spirituality.
2. Subjectivity overcomes objectivity.
3. Symbolist painters openly display sexual, satanic and even drug use themes.
4. Another characteristic of symbolism in painting is that artists they bet on color, giving free rein to what they want to express through shape and color.
5. They also showed certain tendency to abstraction.
6. In that search for freedom, the symbolism had only general tendencies, without there being strict procedures, each artist offering his own style.
7. Some painters who tried to escape from the present, being anti-rational and decadent.
8. It was a movement precursor of Modernism and decadentism.
9. Her art is full of references to the supernatural, mythology, and religion.
10. The women were habitual protagonists in the works as subjects who express their emotions, representing themselves as fatal women or sensual and / or mythological beings.
11. The topics most common were the eroticism, the occult, romanticism and morbid, although the theme was also very varied, filling his works with personal references. The oneiric was basic in the mythological and biblical works of artists such as Gustave Moreau and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. For their part, artists like Gustav Klimt decided by preferring to paint sensual and ethereal women in unreal environments, while Edvard munch shows dark and sad paintings and Odilon Redon immerses us in scenes full of flowers and spiders in which black prevails.

The influence of Symbolism was wide and extends to the present day, being an inspiration for many later artists and movements.