Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is not a single movement but a constellation of highly individual responses to Impressionism, each artist taking its innovations in a radically different direction. Cézanne used Impressionist color while building a new structural solidity that would directly inspire Cubism; Seurat reduced it to a systematic science of pointillist dots; Van Gogh charged it with emotional intensity through swirling, expressive brushwork; Gauguin abandoned Europe entirely for Tahiti, seeking a more 'primitive' spiritual vision.

These four figures, working largely in isolation from one another, collectively dismantled the remaining conventions of Western representational painting and pointed toward abstraction. The 1910 exhibition 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists,' organized by critic Roger Fry in London, gave the movement its name and introduced it to British audiences. Post-Impressionism marks the true beginning of modern art: the moment when the personal vision of the individual artist became more important than any shared style or tradition.