Alfred Jarry was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), often cited as a forerunner of the Dada, Surrealist, and Futurist movements of the 1920s and 1930s and later the Theatre of the absurd In the 1950s and 1960s He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Jarry in 1896
Alfred Jarry, Deux aspects de la marionnette original d'Ubu Roi, premiered at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on 10 December 1896.
Jarry cycling in Corbeil in 1898.
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.
Death and the Grave Digger (La Mort et le Fossoyeur) (c. 1895) by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of symbolist motifs. The angel of Death, pristine snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all express symbolist longings for transfiguration "anywhere, out of the world".
Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, 1872, depicting: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan (seated); Pierre Elzéar, Emile Blémont, and Jean Aicard (standing)
Portrait of Charles Baudelaire (c. 1862), whose writing was a precursor of the symbolist style
Eugen Bracht, The Shore of Oblivion, 1889
