The beginning of the Symbolist movement in art is regarded as having begun in the late 1880's, in the city and country, which had been for centuries the art and culture capital of the western world, Paris.

... The beginning of the Symbolist movement in art is regarded as having begun in the late 1880's, in the city and country, which had been for centuries the art and culture capital of the western world, Paris. Many young artists were striving to find ways of escape the ideas and fashions of their dominant Impressionist 'predecessors' and their objective naturalism. Artists in France such as Redon, Moreau, and Puvis de Chavannes, as well as those such as Khnopff, Hodler ,Segantini, Klimt, and Munch in the rest of Europe therefore turned to imagination and fantasy for inspiration. These Symbolists rejected objectivity in favour of the subjective, and turned away from the direct representation of reality in favour of a synthesis of many different aspects, aiming to suggest ideas by means of ambiguous yet powerful symbols. They combined religious mysticism with an interest in the perverse and the erotic, an interest in

want to read more? →