Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: Along the Seine

Between the years 1882 and 1890, Post-Impressionist artists—such as Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand—flocked to villages on the fringes of Paris.​​There, they experimented with broken brushstrokes and contrasting colors to create an innovative style of painting, one that could have been established only through their collaborative efforts.

Unlike the Impressionists who in the 1870s had spent significant time in tourist locations south of the city along the Seine, the Post-Impressionists preferred the northwestern suburbs around Asnières. This region had previously been a popular spot for recreation and relaxation but became increasingly populated with coal and gas facilities in the last decades of the 19th century. Rather than serving as obstacles to their explorations of sunlight, water, and the colors of nature, the visual vocabulary of these industrialized suburbs—the bridges, embankments, factories, parks, and villages—became vehicles for Van Gogh and his colleagues to experiment with color and paint application.

Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: Along the Seine is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by the curators and other noted scholars.

Credit: Overview from museum website