French1870–1943
Maurice Denis
The chief theorist of the Nabis, who wrote that a painting is first of all a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order. Deeply religious from boyhood, he moved from Gauguin's bold colour toward the classical order he saw in Cézanne. After the First World War he founded workshops to revive religious art and decorated many churches.
A life in paintings
- 1870Born
- 1888Was friends with Paul Sérusier
Fellow students at the Académie Julian and founding Nabis. Sérusier told Denis the story of his lesson from Gauguin, which Denis published, and Denis later wrote a study of Sérusier's life for the 1942 edition of his ABC de la peinture.
Source: Wikipedia - 1889Was influenced by Paul Gauguin
Denis saw Gauguin's work at the Volpini exhibition beside the 1889 Exposition Universelle and called it a revelation: decorative surfaces of strong partitioned colour instead of Impressionist windows on nature. Gauguin's colour and forms passed directly into Denis's paintings from 1890.
Source: Wikipedia - 1900Was influenced by Paul Cézanne
The Nabis shared an admiration for Gauguin and Cézanne. Denis, their chief theorist, came to see Cézanne as the master who restored classical order to modern painting, painted a group tribute to him in 1900, and published an essay on him in 1907.
Source: Wikipedia - 1943Died
Circles
Society · Paris · 1888
Nabis
Young painters from the Académie Julian who took their name from a Hebrew word for prophets. They admired Gauguin and Cézanne, treated a small panel Sérusier painted under Gauguin's direction in 1888 as their emblem, and held their last exhibition in 1900.
Where to see them
Musée d'Orsay
Paris
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