After Impressionism

Through the 1880s the very essence of representation, meaning and process in Western art were profoundly interrogated. Plausible representations of the external world were cast aside in favour of non-naturalism expressed in varying degrees, from modest distortions of reality to pure abstraction. The decades that followed, up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, were a complex, vibrant period of artistic questioning, searching, risk-taking and innovation. Concentrating on this period of great upheaval, this book will explore the constructive dialogue between painting and sculpture, and the influential roles played by three giants of the era, Paul Czanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, across European art as a whole.