Post-Impressionists

In this work we are introduced to a world in which 112 artists from 16 countries were active in the century after 1860, particularily in France. It deals with individual artists and with successive schools - Pointillism, Pont-Aven, Nabis, Symbolists, Realists, Expressionists. The author tells the story of how Sensation, Challenge and Disorientation in the arts reflected violent changes in society and culture in the entire period of Post-Impressionism. At a time when many of its members expressed themselves as suffocating in the mediocre climate of their surroundings, Post-Impressionism released complex, fresh, and vital energies in the arts. Cezanne, Van Gogh, Whistler, Seurat, Degas, Gauguin and their contemporaries together helped prepare the way for increased use of novelty in color and imaginative combination of realism and abstraction, leading to the formulation of rather premissive aesthetic values which are so prevalent today