Post–impressionism

While Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionising an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated colour and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eug?ne Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist’s theory of colours into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes,Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, while Cézanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th century painting, and which is here presented, for the great pleasure of the reader, by Nathalia Brodska?a.


Nathalia Brodska?a is a curator at The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. She has published monographs on Rousseau, Renoir, Derain, Vlaminck, and Van Dongen, as well as many books on the Fauves and Na?ve Art. She is currently working on a study of French painters at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.