They tended to favor angular, often distorted forms and jarring, symbolic colors. In this painting Country House by a River, the reflections in the river are so completely vertical that the water resembles a wall.Įxpressionist artists reflected the general atmosphere of anxiety on the eve of the First World War. The artist has to bear in mind that all these are laid out on a flat canvas, to which landscapes and three-dimensional forms have to adapt. Paul Cézanne declared that “a painting is not a window,” and the artist should not attempt to copy nature, but rather, to translate it into the language of art, which seeks form, color, structure, and organization.
The stalks that fall to the reaper’s scythe, in Harvest in Provence become an allegory for human life and the cycle of life and death. He expressed his feelings and emotional turmoil through his color and turbulent brushstrokes. Vincent van Gogh’s art was inseparable from his life. In Upa Upa (The Fire Dance)he liberated color and shape from the inhibiting Western objective gaze, and filling them with spiritual and mysterious qualities. Paul Gauguin traveled the non-Western world, in search of innocence and purity which he expected to find there. 20th century art was deeply influenced by the approaches of the following three artists: Post-Impressionists were influenced by Impressionism, but developed their personal style, each one in a different direction. He recreated the scene as he saw it, accentuating the steep angle, with the light of a specific time of day – he painted fourteen views at different times throughout the day – rendering the bustle of the street with its individual people disappearing into the crowd, as they filled the city streets and the parks. Camille Pissarro positioned himself at the window of a room on the top floor of a hotel, from where he could see the bustling city. Impressionists also described the city and city life. There he tried to paint what meets the eye without distinguishing between significant, and minor objects, or between reality and its reflections in the water. In order to draw The Water Lilies in his garden, Claude Monet left his studio and went outdoors.
#Hurme geometric sans free alternative series
They painted series describing the same subjects at different times of the day and through different seasons. They used varying brushstrokes and placed complementary colors side by side. The Impressionists researched color, light and its reflection. Undeniably their painting conveyed the image as seen by the “innocent” eye as opposed depicting the subject as an “all-knowing artist”. One of the critics described their art contemptuously as “a mere impression", and the artists adopted the term as their movement’s name. The Impressionists got their name in 1874, on the occasion of their first exhibition. These new art movements acted outside of the artistic establishment, basing their art on personal observation heralding the arrival of Impressionists. The Realists, led by Courbet, painted village life, its inhabitants and its natural environment, and the Barbizon School – Jean Baptiste Camille Corot among them - were the first to go outdoors to paint landscape.
The Romantics sought inspiration in distant lands and exotic places. The Symbolists fused influences from various sources into personal visions. The changing face of 19th century France, following the revolution, the growing city, and the rise of bourgeoisie in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, brought about many changes in French art.