IMPRESSIONISM

  

 Impressionism

 ɪmˈpreʃ.ən.ɪ.zəm

 noun

It's an artistic movement, born in France, in Paris around the 70s of the nineteeth century.

it lasted about 10 years

Impressionist begin to paint the impressions they felt in front of a landscape, “en plein air”, abolition of drawing ,search of the bright moment, the one in which the lights shines more.

-use primary and secondary colors

-use of colored shadows

-aversion to accademic art

-artists: Claude Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir and Cezanne

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PAINTING CHOSEN

Title: “ Water lilies and Japanese Pond” (The Water Lilies series)

Artist: Claude Monet

Year: 1883

Location: Sale of the Orangerie Museum on the place de la concorde, Paris

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DESCRIPTION:

The Water Lilies series is a cycle of around 250 paintings created by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

When in 1883 Claude Monet moved to a small farmhouse near Giverny, not far from Paris, he had the opportunity to fulfill his dream: particularly significant for Monet was the opening of a small river basin full of water lilies, ornamental plants that float on the water regenerating without stopping.

Monet, in the execution of this cycle, let himself be overwhelmed by a great creative torment: in fact, he was constantly unfulfilled by the pictorial outcome of his paintings, a characteristic that spurred him to follow new ideas.

Monet was used to be attracted to the madness of the metropolis, but now his eye rests on these small "microcosm", and his brush stops this glimpse of nature by capturing the flowers in their blooming and fading, and generating a sense of quiet and peace.

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INTERPRETATION:

In this period of his life, Monet has been conditioned by the japanese tradition. 

He keeps to paint in front of a landscape and searching for the “bright moment” and lights, using primary and secondary colors.

The peculiarities of this series of painting are two, the first is that they were a sort of “daily diary”, in which everytime he adds details that on the previous work he didn’t noticed; the second is that he loved to represent how the light catches the color in different moments of the day.