An art movement that flourished particularly in France in the 1880s and 1890s, based on the belief that the function of art is not simply to describe but to suggest, by means of symbols, the transcendent reality behind the surface appearance of things. The movement was a reaction both to romanticism and to the realistic approach implicit in Impressionism. Not so much a style per se, Symbolism in art was an international ideological trend that served as a catalyst in the development away from representation in art and toward abstraction.
