symbolism

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symbolism European art and literary movement. Symbolism has its origins in France in the 1880s, where it arose as a reaction against the pragmatic realism of Courbet and impressionism. Its exponents wanted to express ideas or abstractions, rather than simply imitate the visible world. The most powerful tendency in the movement stemmed from Gauguin and Émile Bernard (c.1888). Another less dynamic trend introduced formal innovations into traditional painting. Its chief exponents were Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Puvis de Chavannes. Outside France, Burne-Jones and Munch are considered as symbolists. In literature, the movement included a group of poets active in the 19th century, who were followers of Verlaine and Baudelaire, such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud in France, and Poe and Swinburne in the US and Britain.

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