Editing Post-expressionism (section)

===Animism===
[[File:Wolvens, Bont strandzicht, reduced size.jpg|thumb|430px|left|''Bont strandzicht'' by Henri-Victor Wolvens, 1959. Wolvens began his style in the 1920s but worked until his death in 1977.]]
In Belgium, expressionism had been influenced by artists like [[James Ensor]] and [[Louis Pevernagie]] who had combined expressionism with [[Symbolism (arts)|symbolism]]. Ensor, known for his paintings of people in masks, carnival outfits, and side-by-side with skeletons, also often painted realistic scenes, but imbued them with a fevered brush, garish colors, and strong contrasts to suggest a strange unreality present in them, as did Pevernagie. Expressionism was also exhibited in the [[Latemse School]], where adherents like [[Constant Permeke]] and [[Hubert Malfait]] used brushwork in painting and loose form in sculpture to show a mystic reality behind nature.

In what had been called a “retour à l’humain” (return to the human), many artists working in Belgium after the war had kept the expressive brush of their forebears, but had rejected what they had seen as the anti-human, unreal distortions in their subject matter. The goal was to use the expressive brush to depict the soul or spirit of the objects, people, and places they were painting, rather than a hyperbolic, externalized, displaced angst of the artist. These artists were often characterized as 'introverts', as opposed to the 'extroverts' of expressionism.
[[File:Jespers, floris-still life with coffeepot.jpg|thumb|300px|right|''Stillleben mit Kaffeekanne'' by Floris Jespers, 1932. Jespers was influenced by animism after the war.]]
Belgian art critic [[Paul Haesaerts]] later gave this movement the title ''animism'', which he took from anthropologist [[Edward Burnett Tylor|E.B. Tylor]]'s book ''Primitive Culture'' (1871) describing '[[animism]]' as primitive religion that based itself on the idea a soul inhabited all objects. Later, Haesaerts, driven by criticism to do so, also used the terms ''réalisme poétique'' and ''intimism'', although ''animism'' is still most commonly used in literature.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.museumhermandecuyper.be/evolutie_animisme_en.htm|title= ''Artistic evolution: animism'' |publisher = Museum Herman De Cuyper}}</ref> ''Intimism'' will more often refer to the art practiced by some members of the [[Les Nabis|Nabis]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/291874/Intimism|title= ''Intimism'' |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica Online |access-date=16 June 2011}}</ref>

The most recognized painter of these artists is [[Henri-Victor Wolvens]], who painted many scenes of the beach and ocean at [[Ostend]]. In his beach scenes, harsh waves are painted with a rough brush, clouds in patches &mdash; rougher when in storm &mdash; and the sand with a scraped quality. Figures are painted as simply as possible, often as stick figures, and given translucency and movement &mdash; so his bathers show the activity of the beach and it the activity of the bathers blend in with the motion of the waves crashing ashore.

The work of [[Floris Jespers]] was strongly influenced by an animist spirit after the war. He uses form and color to give different degrees of vividness to the subjects in his paintings, each to the degree that one would associate them with in life.

Other painters associated with this movement are [[Anne Bonnet]], [[Albert Dasnoy]], [[Henri Evenepoel]], [[Mayou Iserentant]], [[Jacques Maes]], [[Marcel Stobbaerts]], [[Albert Van Dyck]], [[Louis Van Lint]], [[War Van Overstraeten]] and [[Jozef Vinck]].

Filippo De Pisis, referenced above, exhibited animist tendencies.

[[George Grard]] is the sculptor most associated with animism. Like expressionists, he went against both naturalism and classical tendencies, but used exaggerations from his models to heighten the feeling and sensuality of the form, and chose lyrical subjects. Grard was friends with [[Charles LePlae]], who had a similar style, but kept more in line with natural and classical forms.

[[Herman De Cuyper]] is also associated with animism, and abstracted to a more extreme degree than did Grard or LaPlae, and in some ways is more similar to [[Henry Moore]].