Symbolism Prints Collection
Print Collections > Symbolism
The Symbolism art movement first appeared in the late nineteenth-century in France, Russia and Belgium.
Symbolist artists expressed inner emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolised artwork, favouring works based on fantasy and imagination, often turning to the mystical and occult in an attempt to evoke subjective states of mind in the viewer through their symbolic and metaphorical visual art.
The Symbolist position in painting was first defined by the critic Albert Aurier in an article in the Mercure de France - 1891 where he elaborated on the assertion that the purpose of art “is to clothe the idea in sensuous form” and stressed the subjective, symbolical, and decorative functions of art that give visual expression to one’s inner life.
Painters who are truly representative of Symbolist movement include three principal figures: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
