Post Impressionism

For many centuries the basis of the European painting tradition was the realistic representation of the visible world. This reached its evolutionary climax in the Impressionists with their use of pure colour and techniques for portraying light. Post-Impressionism became an umbrella term to cover the various art movements that developed out of, or as a reaction to, Impressionism and all that had gone before. As such, it formed the basis for the collective styles that are now known as Modern Art and can be said to mark the watershed between the objective approach to art of the traditional schools and the subjective, self-expressive, and reflective approach that became the hallmark of mainstream Twentieth Century art. Although the first Post-Impressionist painters were French, the term was in fact coined in London. It came into use as a result of an exhibition – "Manet and the Post-Impressionists" - organised by Roger Fry at the Grafton Galleries in November 1910. This focused on the works of Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, while a follow-up show at the same galleries in the winter of 1912-13 entitled "The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition" highlighted the work of Matisse and Picasso.