SuperRare

Symbolism emerged in the second half of the 19th century, mainly in Catholic European countries where industrialisation had developed to a great degree. Starting as a literary movement, Symbolism was soon identified with a young generation of painters who wanted art to reflect emotions and ideas rather than to represent the natural world in an objective way, united by a shared pessimism and weariness of the decadence in modern society.

Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism.