Postimpressionism

Postimpressionism is an art-historical term coined by British art critic Roger Fry to describe the various styles of painting that flourished(klestėti) in France during the period from about 1880 to about 1910. Generally, the term is used as a convenient chronological umbrella covering the generation of artists who sought(ieškoti) new forms of expression in the wake of the pictorial(tapyba) revolution worked by Impressionism. Among the principal figures in this group were Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Georges SSeurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh. It was mainly still lifes and landscapes. The postimpressionists liked to use lots of colors and shadows.

Although their individual styles differed profoundly(giliai), all of these artists moved away from the aesthetic(estetinis) program of impressionism and, in particular, from the impressionists’ emphasis on depicting(pavaizduoti) a narrow spectrum of visual reality. It would be a mistake to view the postimpressionists as simply rejecting their impressionist heritage; rather, they accepted the revolutionary impact(smūgis) of impressionism aand went on to explore new aesthetic ideas, many of which grew out of concepts implicit(numanomas) in impressionism. Another connecting link between most of the postimpressionists was a common emphasis on surface pattern, a trait that led many contemporary critics tto use the term decorative to describe postimpressionist pictures. Aside from a general dissatisfaction with impressionism and a widely shared interest in surface pattern, however, the postimpressionists displayed few stylistic or thematic similarities.

Cezanne had belonged to the impressionist movement, but he withdrew(pasitraukti) from it because he wanted to create a style that he described as more „solid and durable(patvarus).“ Working in isolation in Aix-en-Provence during the 1880s and ’90s, he evolved a new concept of space that was of fundamental importance to 20th-century painting. This highly individual art, which was to be greatly admired by the next generation of painters, laid the groundwork for the creation of Cubism by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

The art of Gauguin and vvan Gogh, however, reflected a more emotional and involved highly charged colors and a rhythmical patterning of lines across the surface of a picture. Like Cezanne, both Gauguin and van Gogh abandoned the impressionist movement, ...