POST-IMPRESSIONISM AND EARLY MODERNISM

The Thannhauser Collection’s selection of European art of the fin de siècle—a complex period defined by economic, political, social, and psychological turmoil, often in the name of progress—captures the diversity of styles that emerged in reaction to the era’s two dominant artistic strains: academic naturalism and Impressionism, which both promoted adherence to the physical world.

Artists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh—subjects of critical exhibitions organized at the Thannhausers’ gallery in Munich—turned their eye inward. Rather than produce art that was a “window to the world,” these so-called Post-Impressionists used sinuous lines and nonnaturalistic colors to imbue their paintings with an emotive tenor. Van Gogh, in particular, translated reality through the lens of personal experience and feeling. Painted during Van Gogh’s recovery from an attack of mental distress, Mountains at Saint-Rémy (July 1889) evokes the artist’s subjective state—not to mention the awe inspiring presence of the rock formations near his hospital grounds—through its thick application of paint and animated brushstrokes.