Top 100 · Symbolism
The 100 artists who painted the invisible
From Moreau to Redon, from Klimt to Munch: myths, dreams, visions and interior landscapes across Europe and beyond.
Born in the last decades of the 19th century, symbolism refuses to limit art to the visible world. In Paris, Brussels, Vienna, London, Munich, Krakow and the Nordic countries, painters seek plastic equivalents to dreams, music, myth, anguish and desire. The movement has neither a unique style nor a strict boundary: it links painting, poetry, posters, illustration, stained glass and decorative arts.
Myth, dream, music and inner world.
An inner revolution
Idea matters more than anecdote
For symbolists, a sphinx, an island, a sleeping woman or a nocturnal landscape are never mere subjects. They open towards a hidden truth, a desire, a fear or a spiritual experience that naturalism cannot fully grasp.
Multiple homes
Each country invents its own symbolism
France favors myth and suggestion; Belgium explores mysticism and decadence; Vienna unites painting and decor; the British extend Pre-Raphaelitism; Poland, Russia and the Nordic countries draw on their legends and landscapes.
The criteria
Influence, visionary force and circulation of images
The rank intersects with historical importance, originality of language, quality of preserved works and influence on Art Nouveau, Nabis, Expressionism or Surrealism. The fifty artists of the old edition are preserved and supplemented by fifty essential figures.
The Top 10
Ten masters who gave form to the invisible
Moreau, Redon, Böcklin, Klimt and Munch place myth, dreams, anxiety and desire at the heart of modernity.
#1
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau gives symbolism an immediately identifiable French voice. He installs myths, jewelry, monsters and biblical visions in a dense, precious, almost incantatory painting.
See the Gustave Moreau collection
#2
Odilon Redon
In Odilon Redon, symbolism becomes an instrument of dreams and suggestion. It gives rise to floating eyes, mental flowers and silent apparitions, between black dream and inner color.
See the Odilon Redon collection
#3
Arnold Boecklin
Arnold Böcklin goes beyond the boundaries of the visible through a practice linked to symbolism. His Island of the Dead condenses an entire aesthetic: solitude, tombs, cypresses, marine silence and metaphysical vertigo.
See the Arnold Böcklin collection
#4
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
The singularity of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes lies in his way of making symbolism sensitive and concrete. Its large, calm figures, its bare landscapes and its wall allegories give the symbolism a monumental gravity.
See the Pierre Puvis de Chavannes collection
#5
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt places his work in symbolism and Viennese Secession without renouncing a very personal vision. It transforms the body, gold and ornament into visions suspended between sensuality, mystery and decorative rite.
See the Gustav Klimt collection
#6
Edvard Munch
With Edvard Munch, symbolism and expressionism takes on a particular inner intensity. He paints anguish, desire, jealousy and death as visible, vibrant, almost electric forces.
See the Edvard Munch collection
#7
Fernand Khnopff
Fernand Khnopff transforms the signs of symbolism into a visual experience rather than a simple story. Its cold figures, its interior sphinxes and its locked gazes compose a theater of silence and enigma.
See the Fernand Khnopff collection
#8
Jan Toorop
Jan Toorop's work connects symbolism to a search for rhythm, silence and presence. Her nervous lines, visionary women and spiritual compositions connect Java, Brussels and Art Nouveau.
See the Jan Toorop collection
#9
Franz von Stuck
Franz von Stuck occupies an essential place through his singular interpretation of symbolism. It gives the myth a sculptural power: sphinxes, sin, centaurs and nocturnal figures advance with authority.
See the Franz von Stuck collection
#10
Felicien Rops
In the symbolist journey, Félicien Rops brings writing that is unlike any other. Satirical, erotic and demonic, he pushes the fin-de-siecle image towards scandal, bite and black allegory.
See the Félicien Rops collectionChapter I · Ranks 11 to 25
Decadence, Pre-Raphaelitism and visions of Europe
From Brussels to London, from Geneva to Krakow, painting becomes a language of signs, idealized bodies and new spiritualities.
#11
Carlos Schwabe
Carlos Schwabe gives symbolism an immediately identifiable Swiss voice. Its angels, pains, flowers and ideal visions crystallize the symbolism in a sharp, almost mystical line.
See the Carlos Schwabe collection
#12
Jean Delville
In Jean Delville, symbolism becomes an instrument of dreams and suggestion. He defends a spiritualist, initiatory painting, where bodies seem to be crossed by invisible forces.
See the Jean Delville collection
#13
Eugene Carrière
Eugène Carrière goes beyond the boundaries of the visible through a practice linked to symbolism. Its brown mists, its maternity wards and its melted faces reduce the world to an emotional memory.
See the Eugène Carrière collection
#14
Alphonse Osbert
Alphonse Osbert's singularity lies in his way of making symbolism sensitive and concrete. It envelops the figures in a blue, lunar light, where the music of silence counts as much as the subject.
See the Alphonse Osbert collection
#15
Leon Spilliaert
Léon Spilliaert places his work in symbolism without renouncing a very personal vision. His Ostend nights, self-portraits and empty perspectives give the symbolism a modern and sharp solitude.
See the Léon Spilliaert collection
#16
George Frederic Watts
With George Frederic Watts, symbolism takes on a particular inner intensity. He paints great moral ideas with Victorian solemnity, between allegory, portrait and cosmic meditation.
See the George Frederic Watts collection
#17
Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones transforms the signs of Pre-Raphaeliteism and symbolism into a visual experience rather than a simple narrative. Its knights, princesses and medieval myths make the Pre-Raphaelite dream a long, still ceremony.
See the Edward Burne-Jones collection
#18
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti links Pre-Raphaelitism and symbolism to a search for rhythm, silence and presence. It gives the female face a relic intensity, between poetry, desire, memory and fatality.
See the Dante Gabriel Rossetti collection
#19
John william waterhouse
John William Waterhouse occupies an essential place through his singular interpretation of Pre-Raphaelitism and symbolism. Its mythological heroines, witches and dreamers fix the moment when beauty becomes an omen.
See the John William Waterhouse collection
#20
Mikhail Vrubel
In the symbolist journey, Mikhail Vrubel brings writing that is unlike any other. His Demon, his mosaics and his mineral colors carry Russian symbolism towards an almost tragic tension.
See the Mikhail Vrubel collection
#21
Nicholas Roerich
Nicolas Roerich gives symbolism an immediately identifiable Russian voice. It connects sacred landscapes, Slavic legends and Himalayan visions in a painting of spiritual quest.
See the Nicolas Roerich collection
#22
Viktor Vasnetsov
In Viktor Vasnetsov, symbolism becomes an instrument of dreams and suggestion. It gives Russian tales, saints and heroes a national, mythical and almost epic scale.
See the Viktor Vasnetsov collection
#23
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis goes beyond the boundaries of the visible through a practice linked to symbolism. Musician and painter, he transforms cosmic cycles into abstract visions before their time.
See the Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis collection
#24
Jacek Malczewski
Jacek Malczewski's singularity lies in his way of making symbolism sensitive and concrete. He mixes Polish history, self-portrait, mythology and fantastic figures in a painting of national consciousness.
See the Jacek Malczewski collection
#25
Stanisław Wyspiaransski
Stanisław Wyspiaÿski places his work in symbolism without renouncing a very personal vision. Painter, playwright and decorator, he unites portrait, stained glass, theater and Polish identity in the same vision.
See the Stanislaw Wyspiahnski collectionChapter II · Ranks 26 to 50
Nabis, divisionism and landscapes of the soul
The color, decorative line and interior landscape bring together the French Nabis, Italians, Belgians and American visionaries.
#26
Józef Mehoffer
With Józef Mehoffer, symbolism takes on a particular interior intensity. His stained glass windows, portraits and decorative compositions bring together graphic refinement and spiritual imagination.
See the Józef Mehoffer collection
#27
Max Klinger
Max Klinger transforms the signs of symbolism into a visual experience rather than a simple story. His engraved cycles, his visions of love, death and destiny give black and white philosophical power.
See the Max Klinger collection
#28
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler's work links symbolism to a search for rhythm, silence and presence. Its parallel figures, its mountains and its human rites seek a visual law in the body and the landscape.
See the Ferdinand Hodler collection
#29
Giovanni Segantini
Giovanni Segantini occupies an essential place through his singular interpretation of symbolism. It elevates the mountain, motherhood and divisionist light towards an Alpine spirituality.
See the Giovanni Segantini collection
#30
Gaetano Previati
In the symbolist journey, Gaetano Previati brings writing that is unlike any other. It vibrates the divisionist touch around maternal, sacred and visionary subjects.
See the Gaetano Previati collection
#31
Giulio Aristide Sartorio
Giulio Aristide Sartorio gives symbolism an immediately identifiable Italian voice. He mixes great decor, ancient myth and national dream in a broad and theatrical painting.
See the Giulio Aristide Sartorio collection
#32
Galileo Chini
At Galileo Chini, symbolism and Art Nouveau become an instrument of dreams and suggestion. Its frescoes, decorations and orientalizing visions connect symbolism, modern style and monumental ambition.
See the Galileo Chini collection
#33
Elihu Vedder
Elihu Vedder goes beyond the boundaries of the visible through a practice linked to symbolism. It gives fin-de-siecle America a strange voice, nourished by myths, the Orient and obscure poetry.
See the Elihu Vedder collection
#34
Abbott handerson thayer
Abbott Handerson Thayer's uniqueness lies in his way of making symbolism sensitive and concrete. His angels, portraits and ideal figures combine naturalistic observation and spiritual aspiration.
See the Abbott Handerson Thayer collection
#35
Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder places his work in symbolism without renouncing a very personal vision. Its dark seascapes, moons and biblical silhouettes resemble dreams painted in the night.
See the Albert Pinkham Ryder collection
#36
Simeon Solomon
With Simeon Solomon, symbolism takes on a particular inner intensity. His intense, biblical and androgynous art gives Pre-Raphaelite visions a marginal and disturbing dimension.
See the Simeon Solomon collection
#37
Evelyn De Morgan
Evelyn De Morgan transforms the signs of symbolism into a visual experience rather than a simple story. She paints the soul, light, death and liberation with singular spiritual clarity.
See the Evelyn De Morgan collection
#38
Marianne Stokes
Marianne Stokes' work links symbolism to a search for rhythm, silence and presence. Its religious figures, legends and collected scenes give the symbolism a serious sweetness.
See the Marianne Stokes collection
#39
Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer occupies an essential place through his singular interpretation of symbolism. A subtle pastellist, he envelops portraits and landscapes in a musical, almost hypnotic atmosphere.
See the Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer collection
#40
Alexandre Séon
In the symbolist journey, Alexandre Séon brings a writing style unlike any other. Close to Péladan, he paints ideal figures, marine visions and allegories of great linear purity.
See the Alexandre Séon collection
#41
Armand Point
Armand Point gives symbolism an immediately identifiable French voice. He seeks an archaic and refined path, between dreamed Renaissance, ideal workshop and decorative mysticism.
See the Armand Point collection
#42
Henry Martin
In Henri Martin, symbolism becomes an instrument of dreams and suggestion. Before being above all a luminous decorator, he gives the figure and the landscape a symbolist vibration.
See the Henri Martin collection
#43
Charles Filiger
Charles Filiger goes beyond the boundaries of the visible through a practice linked to symbolism. Its compartmentalized forms, its saints and its Breton figures reduce the image to a modern icon.
See the Charles Filiger collection
#44
Paul Sérusier
Paul Sérusier's singularity lies in his way of making symbolism and Nabi sensitive and concrete. With The Talisman, he transforms landscape, color and spirituality into a manifesto for the Nabis.
See the Paul Sérusier collection
#45
Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis places his work in symbolism and Nabi without renouncing a very personal vision. He recalls that a painting is first and foremost an organized surface, while maintaining an intimate and religious fervor.
See the Maurice Denis collection
#46
Ker-Xavier Roussel
With Ker-Xavier Roussel, symbolism and Nabi takes on a particular inner intensity. It populates gardens, nymphs and mythological scenes with a decorative softness from the Nabi world.
See the Ker-Xavier Roussel collection
#47
Emile Bernard
Émile Bernard transforms the signs of symbolism into a visual experience rather than a simple story. It links partitionism, Brittany, spirituality and simplification of forms in a very constructed symbolism.
See the Émile Bernard collection
#48
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin's work links symbolism to a search for rhythm, silence and presence. He seeks a primitive and mental elsewhere, transforming color into spiritual and mythological language.
See the Paul Gauguin collection
#49
James Ensor
James Ensor occupies an essential place through his singular interpretation of symbolism. Masks, skeletons and creaking carnival give its symbolism a brutal and visionary irony.
See the James Ensor collection
#50
William Degouve de Nuncques
In the symbolist journey, William Degouve de Nuncques brings a writing style unlike any other. Its nocturnal houses, silent gardens and floating landscapes seem to be held back just before the dream.
See the William Degouve collection by NuncquesChapter III · Ranks 51 to 75
Enchanted books, Vienna and Nordic mythologies
British illustrators, Viennese Secession and Scandinavian artists circulate symbolism between painting, poster, stained glass, storytelling and decorative arts.
#51
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley transforms black and white into a theater of elegance, eroticism and irony. His sinuous lines for Salomé and The Yellow Book make emptiness, mask and arabesque an immediately modern language.
See the Aubrey Beardsley collection
#52
Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham gives the tales a forest of nerve branches, ambiguous creatures and almost vegetal silhouettes. Its transparent color softens the design without dispelling the anxiety specific to Nordic legends.
See the Arthur Rackham collection
#53
Edmund Dulac
Edmund Dulac composes precious images where Dream Orient, European tales and blue nights respond to each other. His subtly attuned washes transform each story into a suspended space, closer to vision than description.
See the Edmund Dulac collection
#54
Harry Clarke
Harry Clarke combines the sharp line of the illustration with the colorful light of the stained glass window. At home, Poe, the saints and the decadent figures share the same intensity, made of gothic details and hallucinated faces.
See the Harry Clarke collection
#55
Jessie M. King
Jessie M. King people books, jewelry and settings of slender silhouettes, flowers and imaginary realms. Its delicate line connects Scottish symbolism, Art Nouveau and the art of storytelling without ever becoming pure decoration.
See the Jessie M. King Collection
#56
Margaret macdonald mackintosh
Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh builds panels where women, roses and geometric signs seem to emerge from a silent ritual. The relief of the materials and the paleness of the figures give Glasgow Style its most spiritual dimension.
See the Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh collection
#57
Frances MacDonald
Frances MacDonald explores motherhood, destiny and sleep in watercolors of contained strangeness. His hieratic figures, taken in networks of lines, shift symbolism towards a deeply personal sensitivity.
See the Frances MacDonald collection
#58
Pamela colman smith
Pamela Colman Smith makes the archetypes of the Rider-Waite tarot visible through simple, colorful and immediately memorable scenes. Her experience of theater and illustrated books gives each card real narrative power.
See the Pamela Colman Smith collection
#59
Marie Spartali Stillman
Marie Spartali Stillman transposes Dante, the Italian Renaissance and poetry into watercolors of great restraint. Her meditative women and her walled gardens extend Pre-Raphaelitism with a less theatrical, more interior voice.
See the Marie Spartali Stillman collection
#60
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale renews medieval and Shakespearean legends with luminous precision drawing. His compositions combine narration, floral symbols and psychology without sacrificing the readability of the image.
See the Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale collection
#61
Alfons Mucha
Alfons Mucha is not limited to the poster: his haloed women, his decorative cycles and The Slavic Epic form a vast symbolic language. The plant line serves national identity as much as the ideal of beauty.
See the Alfons Mucha collection
#62
Koloman Moser
Koloman Moser unifies painting, posters, furniture and graphic arts within the Viennese Secession. Its flat areas, square rhythms and allegorical figures shift symbolism towards modern design.
See the Koloman Moser collection
#63
Carl Moll
Carl Moll paints gardens, interiors and views of Vienna with light ordered by large colored surfaces. His work connects symbolist intimacy with the decorative rigor of the Secession.
See the Carl Moll collection
#64
Max Kurzweil
Max Kurzweil gives the Viennese portrait a melancholy tension that emerges beneath the elegance. The Lady in Yellow where her engravings show how color, pose and decor can suggest an interior state.
See the Max Kurzweil collection
#65
Wilhelm List
Wilhelm List mixes mythological subjects, portraits and landscapes in a painting with calm contours. Its symbolism, close to Klimt without imitating him, favors the light surface and the silence of attitudes.
See the Wilhelm List collection
#66
Sascha Schneider
Sascha Schneider transforms the male body into a figure of struggle, initiation and desire. His powerful drawings for Karl May and monumental compositions give German symbolism an unusual physical frankness.
See the Sascha Schneider collection
#67
Ludwig von Hofmann
Ludwig von Hofmann imagines a luminous antiquity populated by bathers, dancers and ideal landscapes. Its decorative simplification of bodies and colors makes the link between symbolism, Jugendstil and modernity.
See the Ludwig von Hofmann collection
#68
Heinrich Vogeler
Heinrich Vogeler envelops gardens, houses and female figures in a network of finely chiseled lines. Worpswede's idyll then takes on a social commitment at home which profoundly transforms his language.
See the Heinrich Vogeler collection
#69
Oskar Zwintscher
Oskar Zwintscher paints portraits of cold precision where the setting becomes a psychological clue. His nudes and allegories combine meticulous realism, restrained eroticism and fin-de-siecle unease.
See the Oskar Zwintscher collection
#70
Fidus
Fidus translates the ideals of reforming life into naked bodies, solar rays and imaginary architectures. His Prayer to Light condenses a cosmic spirituality that will lastingly mark alternative visual culture.
See the Fidus collection
#71
Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Akseli Gallen-Kallela gives the Kalevala harsh, monumental and deeply national images. Its landscapes, its heroes and its bold colors make Finnish myth a modern material.
See the Akseli Gallen-Kallela collection
#72
Hugo Simberg
Hugo Simberg brings wounded angels, familiar devils and skeletal death into everyday landscapes. His serious humor makes the great enigmas of existence strangely close.
See the Hugo Simberg collection
#73
Magnus Enckell
Magnus Enckell paints awakening, desire and solitude through simplified bodies and almost abstract light. His palette evolves from dark simplicity to a more vibrant color without losing its spiritual tension.
See the Magnus Enckell collection
#74
Theodor kittelsen
Theodor Kittelsen gives trolls, plague and natural forces a form that is both popular and terrifying. His images show how a mountain, a mist or a tree can become mythical presences.
See the Theodor Kittelsen collection
#75
Harald Sohlberg
Harald Sohlberg constructs night landscapes of almost unreal clarity. Winter night in the mountains transforms Norwegian nature into a silent, cosmic and inner experience.
See the Harald Sohlberg collectionChapter IV · Ranks 76 to 100
From the Baltic to the Americas, a global imagination
Sweden, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the United States translate the symbolist dream into their myths, their landscapes and their memories.
#76
Eugene Jansson
Eugène Jansson envelops Stockholm in a deep blue which makes the city a nocturnal and solitary organism. His late works shift this intensity towards the bodies of athletes, observed with the same sculptural force.
See the Eugène Jansson collection
#77
Ernst Josephson
Ernst Josephson moves from realistic portraiture to visions populated by spirits, musicians and unstable figures. His late drawings, nourished by illness and spiritualism, opened a radical path towards expressionism.
See the Ernst Josephson collection
#78
John Bauer
John Bauer installs princesses, knights and trolls in immense forests where the ladder already tells of danger. Its clear design and deep browns have fixed the modern imagination of the Swedish tale.
See the John Bauer collection
#79
Richard Bergh
Richard Bergh combines portrait, landscape and reflection on Swedish cultural identity. In Nordic Summer Evening, the distance between figures and nature transforms a calm scene into emotional meditation.
See the Richard Bergh collection
#80
Ivan Bilibin
Ivan Bilibin frames Russian tales with precise ornaments inspired by folk art and ancient architecture. Its sharp silhouettes and flat colors give the marvelous an instantly recognizable visual coherence.
See the Ivan Bilibine collection
#81
Konstantin Somov
Konstantin Somov imagines an artificial, sensual and slightly cruel 18th century. Masks, parks and romantic encounters become signs of a world aware of its own fragility.
See the Konstantin Somov collection
#82
Mikhail Nesterov
Mikhail Nesterov places monks, hermits and young figures in very gentle Russian landscapes. Nature acts as a spiritual state rather than as a simple setting.
See the Mikhail Nesterov collection
#83
Viktor Borisov-Musatov
Viktor Borisov-Musatov paints abandoned estates and female silhouettes as memories of a vanished time. Its purple and blue harmonies give nostalgia an almost musical form.
See the Viktor Borisov-Musatov collection
#84
Elena Polenova
Elena Polenova collects folk tales and transforms them into decorative images of great invention. Its landscapes and illustrations play an essential role in the birth of a modern Russian national style.
See the Elena Polenova collection
#85
Maria Yakunchikova
Maria Yakunchikova makes windows, gardens and old houses the thresholds of intimate memory. His landscapes, engravings and panels combine observation, decor and melancholy with a very personal voice.
See the Maria Yakunchikova collection
#86
Alexandre Benois
Alexandre Benois reinvents Versailles, theater and art history as so many scenes of memory. Its elegant design and visual culture structure the Mir iskousstva group and the Ballets Russes.
Read the biography of Alexandre Benois on Wikipedia
#87
Leon Bakst
Léon Bakst releases color and movement in settings that transform the stage into total vision. His costumes for the Ballets Russes combine Antiquity, imagined Orient and modern sensuality.
See the Léon Bakst collection
#88
Zinaida Serebriakova
Zinaïda Serebriakova paints work, family and the body with a clarity that retains the elegance of the Russian Silver Age. His self-portraits and rural scenes contrast a direct presence with the upheavals of exile.
Read the biography of Zinaïda Serebriakova on Wikipedia
#89
Kazimierz Stabrowski
Kazimierz Stabrowski combines portraits, visionary landscapes and theosophical research. His iridescent colors and his initiatory subjects make him an important conduit between academicism and Polish modernity.
See the Kazimierz Stabrowski collection
#90
Witold Wojtkiewicz
Witold Wojtkiewicz populates his images of children, puppets and absurd ceremonies. Beneath a fragile appearance, his satirical universe transforms melancholy into disturbing psychological theater.
See the Witold Wojtkiewicz collection
#91
Ferdynand Ruszczyc
Ferdynand Ruszczyc gives clouds, plowed lands and old houses monumental power. His landscapes become portraits of destiny, stretched between national attachment and the forces of nature.
See the Ferdynand Ruszczyc collection
#92
Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka
Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka constructs hallucinatory landscapes from trips to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Its unstable perspective and solar color make each site more mental than topographical.
See the Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka collection
#93
Lajos Gulacsy
Lajos Gulácsy invents Na'Conxypan, an imaginary kingdom where Renaissance, dreams and worry merge. His delicate characters always seem to belong to a parallel time.
See the Lajos Gulacsy collection
#94
József Rippl-Ronai
József Rippl-Rónai brought back from Paris a flat painting which he adapted to Hungarian interiors and figures. His style connects Nabie intimacy, decoration and an affectionate observation of everyday life.
See the József Rippl-Rónai collection
#95
Nikolai Gÿzis
Nikólaos Gÿzis moves from the genre scene to increasingly stripped-down allegorical visions. The Triumph of Religion and its late studies combine light, spirituality and upward movement.
See the Nikólaos Gÿzis collection
#96
Antonio Carneiro
António Carneiro makes family portraits, poetry and landscapes the supports of spiritual meditation. His triptych Life condenses the passage of ages into a simple and deeply emotional form.
See the Antonio Carneiro collection
#97
Néstor Martin-Fernandez de la Torre
Néstor Martin-Fernandez de la Torre invents sensual Canarian symbolism, populated by bodies, gardens and marine allegories. Its vast decorative cycles give the island identity a mythical dimension.
See the Néstor Martin-Fernandez de la Torre collection
#98
Arthur B. Davies
Arthur B. Davies paints female figures traversing unreal landscapes like fragments of ancient choreography. His role on The Armory Show connects this personal symbolism to the American avant-garde.
See the Arthur B. Davies collection
#99
Thomas Wilmer Dewing
Thomas Wilmer Dewing installs silent women in almost empty green or gold interiors. Its subtle chords of color transform worldly conversation into a musical and distant experience.
See the Thomas Wilmer Dewing collection
#100
Frederick Cayley Robinson
Frederick Cayley Robinson paints rooms, hospitals and processions where time seems to stand still. Its calm geometry and dull light give ordinary gestures a ritual gravity.
See the Frederick Cayley Robinson CollectionSources and routes
Extend the visit to symbolism
Biographical and historical landmarks were compared to museum collections and institutional resources devoted to symbolism, Secessions and fin-de-siecle avant-gardes.
The symbolism made the dream visible
These hundred artists show that symbolism is neither a dark palette nor a repertoire of fixed myths. He invents a way of thinking about images: suggesting instead of explaining, transforming the landscape into a state of mind and making the body, color or ornament the signs of an inner world.
To choose a reproduction, start from the desired atmosphere: the richness of Moreau, the colorful silence of Redon, the strangeness of Böcklin, the gold of Klimt, the anguish of Munch or the blue night of Spilliaert. Each sheet then opens a journey dedicated to the artist.
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