Symbolism

   Symbolism originated in France, and was part of a 19th-century movement in which art became infused with mysticism. French Symbolism was both a continuation of the Romantic tradition and a reaction to the realistic approach of impressionism. It served as a catalyst in the outgrowth of the darker sides of Romanticism and toward abstraction. 
The term Symbolism means the systematic use of symbols or pictorial conventions to express an allegorical meaning. Symbolism is an important element of most religious arts and reading symbols plays a main role in psychoanalysis. Thus, the Symbolist painters used these symbols from mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul. 
Not so much a style of art, Symbolism was more an international ideological trend. Symbolists believed that art should apprehend more absolute truths which could only be accessed indirectly. Thus, they painted scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner. They provided particular images or objects with esoteric attractions.
 There were several, rather dissimilar, groups of Symbolist painters and visual artists. Symbolism in painting had a large geographical reach, reaching several Russian artists, as well as American. The closest to Symbolism was Aestheticism. The Pre-Raphaelites, also, were contemporaries of the earlier Symbolists, and have much in common with them. Symbolism had a significant influence on Expressionism and Surrealism, two movements which descend directly from Symbolism proper. The work of some Symbolist visual artists directly impacted the curvilinear forms of the contemporary Art Nouveau movements in Europe and Les Nabis.  


==> Carlos Schwabe (July 21, 1866 – 1926) was a German Symbolist painter and printmaker.

Library Source: "Symbolist Art" / Edward Lucie-Smith

"Born of the Symbolist Movement, Modernism has nevertheless been hostile to the symbol as a means of visual communication. The rise of abstract art, in particular, has tended to focus our attention upon the work as a thing in itself, wholly identified with the art-process. Any art which can be described as symbolist must necessarily reject such an attitude. Behind the shapes and colours to be found on the picture-surface, there is always something else, another realm, another order of meaning." (p.7)

"Elements drawn from a language which every educated person was expected to be able to understand are mixed with other symbols whose meaning would reveal itself only to initiates." (p.7 )

"Symbolism, in the narrow, historical sense of the term, must be approached only as part of a larger whole: the Romantic Movement. Romanticism represents a crisis, a convulsion in the European spirit whose effects are still being felt at the present day." (p. 23)

Puvis de Chavannes and Carriere  ==>

 "Puvis wanted to give new life to the academic tradition; to restore to it its old seriousness and nobility of purpose. He appealed to those who wanted to follow modern ideas without losing touch with established orthodoxy. But his influence spread a good deal further than this; we find a dept to Puvis in quarters which might at first sight be unexpected."  (p.81)