Introduction to Post Impressionism with the study of three painters: Seurat and Pointlism, Van Gogh and Cezanne.

1. Post-impressionism
Mrs. Jennifer Karch
Verona, Italy

2. Post Impressionism
Seurat, Cezanne, and Van
Gogh

3. What is Post-Impressionism?
Post-Impressionism refers to an artistic style that
followed Impressionism at the end of the 1800s.
Most Post-Impressionist artists began as
Impressionists, but then decided to try new ideas.
Seurat was Post-Impressionist because he did not
paint like artists before him, but invented the Poinillist
style.
Another artists, Vincent van Gogh wanted to add
emotion and symbolic meaning to his art through color
and line. His work often contained bold color and
expressive brushstrokes!

4. Postimpressionism,
With the term " post-impressionism " , it means the artistic
guidelines starting in France in the last two decades of the
nineteenth century, which influenced the rest of Europe and that
were fundamental for the birth of the avant-garde art movements
of the twentieth century. Common features of the so-called Post-
Impressionism were:
1. rejection of the only one visual impression
2. freedom of color
3. The pictorial revolution of the Impressionists was the basis of
their painting and it allowed further developments .

5. What is Pointillism?
Pointillism is a technique of
painting in which a lot of tiny
dots are combined to form a
picture. The reason for doing
pointillism instead of a
picture with physical mixing
is that, supposedly,
physically mixing colors dulls
them. Most of the painters
of Seurat's time blended the
colors to make a picture with
a smoother feeling than
Seurat's bright, dotty works.

6. Seurat invented pointillism.

7. Georges Seurat
(1859-1891)
Georges Seurat was French painter who
founded a painting style called pointillism.
He began painting in the style of
Impressionism but soon became more
interested in scientific color theory. He is
famous for using little dabs or points of pure
bright color to paint. When viewed from a
distance, the eye mixes the colors together

8. Georges Seraut, 1859 - 1891
Seraut founded in Paris
the Neo-Impressionist
movement, which belived
in being distant from
academic positions along
with the Impressionist
contemporary issues and
of course, the same
attention to the effects of
light and color .
To mark the passing of Impressionist
painting is the pursuit of more
scientific foundations for their art.
Based on the colour theories of
Michel Chevreul which are based on
chromatic harmony, Seraut reduces
his palette to four colors: blue , red ,
yellow and green along with their
intermediate tones, that he distributes
on the canvas in small dots without
mixing them together.

9. Sunday in The Park, Seurat
This painting has 3,456,000 dots!

10. The label
• Georges Seurat
French, 1859-1891
• A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, 1884/86
• Oil on canvas
81 3/4 x 121 1/4 in. (207.5 x 308.1 cm)
Inscribed at lower right: Seurat
Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection,
1926.224
• de Hauke 162
• Art Institute of Chicago

11. Seurat's famous "A Sunday in the Park on
the Island of La Grande Jatte" (more
commonly known as "Sunday in the Park"), which
covered a wall (81 inches by 120 inches), took him two
years to complete. He was known for amazing
devotion and concentration. The dots in a pointillist
painting can be as small as 1/16 of an inch in diameter!
Based on these measurements, "Sunday in the Park"

12. Presented at the last Impressionist exhibition, this work became the
manifesto of Pointilism, despite the bitter controversy that followed. The work
is characterized both by the pointillist technique and, secondly, from the
geometrical composition of the painting. It is divided in half vertically by the
woman with the red umbrella,and horizontally from the line that touches the
bottom hem of the man’s jacket . In this work the figures and landscape
seem 'frozen' in their movements. The light and volumes acquire an almost
abstract quality by removing any importance to painting en plein air . The
effect of depth is achieved by placing the viewer ideally in the shadows of the
foreground and leading the eye up to the light of the background
(perspective).

13. http://mentalfloss.com/article/6
3510/15-things-you-might-not-
know-about-sunday-la-
grande-jatte-1884

14. Can you see how Seurat painted in the style of
pointillism through all the little dots?

15. When two colors are right next to each other your
eye mixes them in a process called, "optical mixing."
Using optical mixing rather than physical mixing can
create a brighter picture.
By using primary colors optical mixing creates
secondary colors. What are primary and secondary
colors?
How do the colors mix?

16. Primary Colors The primary colors
are red, blue and yellow. Primary
colors cannot be made from other
colors. Artists create secondary and
intermediate colors by mixing primary
pigments.
Secondary Colors The secondary
colors are green, orange and violet
(purple). A secondary color is made by
mixing two primary colors. Each
secondary color is made from the two
primary colors on either side of it in the

17. http://www.georgesseurat.org/
Pick a work of art and find all
about it!
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-seurat-georges.htm

18. Vincent Van Gogh, 1853 - 1890
The son of a Protestant pastor approached around 1880 and almost by
himself to painting still lifes . In the first phase the significant artist drew
his subjects from the pictorial world of the poor in the wake of the realist
painters . Here he was in Belgium painting potato eaters.
The Potato Eaters, 1885

19. In this painting Van Gogh depicts the miserable meal of a peasant family . The
light of a lamp suspended above the table lights the environment resigned , the
poor clothes , their faces almost caricatured , brutalized by fatigue , the food
(yummy) . The work consists of dark colors and the dramatization of the forms
using a strong contrast of light and shade , where you can see the Dutch
tradition of painting and Rembrandt .

22. http://www.lineadombra.it/ita/
mostre/van-gogh/van-gogh-la-
mostra/van-gogh-
introduzione.php

23. In 1886 he moved with his brother Theo in Paris , where admired the
masters of Impressionism and he comes into contact with Toulouse
- Lautrec and Seurat from which derived a palette of colors and the
clearest way to spread the colors in rapid touches .
Self-Portrait , 1887 , is characterized
by dynamic brushstrokes of color that
follow different directions accentuating
the expressiveness of the eyes ..

24. The Bedroom at Arles,, 1888
After several hospitalizations in the hospital in Arles due to
psychological disorders, he decides to be interned in May 1889 , in
the hospital in Saint - Remy de Provence . Here he made about 150
paintings .

25. Van Gogh used color and bold brushstrokes in his
Post Impressionist style.

26. Starry Night,, 1889

27. Starry Night; the painterly gesture of the paintbrush alternates swirling
spirals and undulations that run horizontally and soften the background, as
opposed to the vertical coil and highlights of the cypresses in the
foreground . The large portion of space dedicated to the sky evokes the
movements and brightness of the starts, expressing the feeling of fragility
and inconsistency of the individual against the immensity of the cosmos .

28. Van Gogh painted his iconic The Starry Night in
1889, while in an asylum in Saint-Rémy. “One of
the most beautiful things by the painters of this
century,” he had written to Theo in April 1885, “has
been the painting of Darkness that is still COLOR.”
(The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss
Bequest / Photo John Wronn)

29. STARRY NIGHT
HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM
/WATCH?V=N7TX1UN4SHU
The Starry Night is an oil on canvas by the Dutch post-
impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June, 1889, it
depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of
an idealized village.
http://legomenon.com/starry-night-meaning-of-vincent-van-gogh-
painting.html

30. Wheatfield with Crows , 1890 is the latest work by Van Gogh . In the middle of
a field of wheat, a symbol of fertility and life, a winding path leads the eye
towards an empty horizon over which hangs a dark sky for the approach of a
storm , and crossed by a flock of crows. Painting is also very thick with paint,
and the same color has almost a three-dimensional consistency. You can
almost see the handle of the brush grooves in the color. The bright yellow
field and the blue sky create a contrast that can be read in a symbolic way as
the contrast between life and death and with sinister references to the tragic
end of the artist. *he died two days later*

31. Paul Cezanne 1839-1906
Cezanne began painting outdoors in
1872 and exhibited with the
Impressionists a few times before
breaking with them in 1887.
Cezanne focused on arrangements of
constructed forms, geometric forms
He believed that there was hidden
order in nature seen in geometric
forms.
.

32. His paintings are abstract, yet objects within
them are recognizable. Cezanne's
revolutionary theories and work lead to Cubism.
Notice the geometric forms painted in the
brushstrokes
Do you see the abstraction in the trees?

33. Cezanne Still Life with Apples and Oranges

34. What made these artists Post Impressionist was
that they painted differently from other artists before
them.
Seurat invented pointillism.
Van Gogh painted differently through bold color and
a bold brushstrokes.
Cezanne painted from direct observation but
distorted his
objects into geometric forms.
WHAT MADE THESE ARTISTS DIFFERENT?
Seurat, Van Gogh, Cezanne

35. VOCABULARY
Seurat
Pointillism
Pattern
Geometric Shape
Setting
Primary Color
Secondary Color
Van Gogh
Color
Line
Space
Setting
Community
Foreground
Middle ground
Background
Cezanne
Color
Value
Space
Emphasis
Overlap
Foreground
Middle ground
Background

36. POST IMPRESSIONISM?
What did you learn about