Nabis Art

1
Nabis French Art Association
It started in 1888. In Hebrew, Nabis meant the
prophet or mystical revelation. Taking this name
aimed to show the close relationship of belief,
creation thought and religion. This was a very
short art movement and its main participants were
French painters and sculptors. The main theorist
was Deny who grouped the feature of Nabis into
two deformation theories "objective deformation,
which is based on the concept of pure aesthetics,
decoration, as well as the technical elements of
the color and composition then
subjective deformation, it makes his personal
inspiration play".
There were a group of Post-Impressionist
avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine
arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s.
Initially a group of friends interested in
contemporary art and literature, most of them
studied at the private art school of Rodolphe
Julianin Paris in the late 1880s. In 1890, they
began to successfully participate in public
exhibitions, while most of their artistic output
remained in private hands or in the possession of
the artists themselves. By 1896, the unity of the
group had already begun to break The
2
Hommage àCézanne, painted by Maurice Denis in
1900, recollects memories of a time already gone,
before even the term Nabis had been revealed to
the public. Meanwhile, most members of the group
Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard
could stand, artistically, on their own. Only
Paul Sérusier had problems to overcome though
it was his Talisman, painted at the advice of
Paul Gauguin, that had revealed to them the way
to go.
With the solid foundation of literature and
history as well as color focus, Nabis works
formed a sharp contrast with the same time
symbolism. Nabis artists gave up the stiff
drawing contour and adopted the use of the card
paper with strong adsorption to replace the
canvas to ease the color in order to pursue
the color effect. Sometimes they also used
protein or glue to reconcile paints, so the
created works were with soft color, full of
vitality and striking styles.
Nabis advocated to reform the painting art and
extensively absorbed the artistic beneficial
factors of P. Gauguin, P. Cezanne and Japan
Yamato-e. It also advocated to rearrange the
nature and emphasized the creation of
poetic realism in the perceptual and rational
field to pay attention to the principles
of simple colors and deformation in the pursuit
of flat decorative effect and symbolic
expression. The main representatives were
Sailvxiai, P. Bonnard, M. Deny, and E. Vial.
Nabis disbanded in 1899.
Artisoo Oil Painting Blog Reference
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