Postimpressionism is the name applied to several styles of painting that arose in Western Europe, especially France, in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Postimpressionism followed the art movement known as Impressionism.
Impressionist painters sought to capture a direct experience of the natural world. They rebelled against the idealized, carefully finished paintings of the prevailing academic style. Unlike the academic painters, the Impressionists did not try to give their art a theoretical, moral, or emotional significance. The Postimpressionists attempted to move beyond the ideas and techniques of Impressionism. Postimpressionist painters added emotional or symbolic meanings to their work. In this way they helped bring about the transition from Impressionism’s faithfulness to nature to Fauvism, Cubism, and abstract styles of the 1900’s.
The English art critic Roger Fry coined the term Postimpressionism in 1910 for an exhibition of modern painting he organized in London. The most important Postimpressionists were the French artists Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne; and the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
