Les Nabis

also: Nabis

movement 1888-1900 France

The Nabis were young French painters - most of them students at the Académie Julian - who banded together in Paris in 1888 and parted ways after a final exhibition in 1900. Their name, coined by the poet Auguste Cazalis from the Hebrew for 'prophets', proclaimed a mission to renew painting. Paul Sérusier brought the spark from Pont-Aven, where Paul Gauguin guided him in painting The Talisman, a small wood panel of flat, vivid color patches. In 1890 Maurice Denis supplied the creed: a picture, before it is anything else, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order. Believing art to be a synthesis of symbols rather than a copy of nature, the Nabis moved freely among easel painting, decorative panels, lithography, and theater design, bridging Impressionism and early modernism.

Example work related to "Les Nabis".
Example work related to "Les Nabis".Public domain (credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Flat areas of bold, often arbitrary color bounded by clear contours
  • The picture treated as a decorative arrangement of colors and lines rather than a window onto depth
  • Intimate subjects - women at their toilette, domestic interiors, gardens - rendered as patterned surfaces
  • Symbolist overtones: motifs chosen as metaphors rather than naturalistic description
  • Strong influence of Japanese prints: flattened space, high viewpoints, and cropped framing
  • Decorative schemes that fuse painting with panels, textiles, and theater sets

Key figures

  • Paul Sérusier (1864-1927) — Painted The Talisman under Gauguin's guidance, seeding the group's flat-color style
  • Maurice Denis (1870-1943) — The group's theorist, who defined the painting as 'a flat surface covered with colors' (1890)
  • Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) — Painter and lithographer of warm, patterned interiors and everyday life
  • Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) — Master of intimate interiors where figures, wallpaper, and fabric merge into pattern
  • Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) — Swiss-born printmaker whose stark woodcuts defined the Nabis' graphic side

Example works

  • The Talisman — Paul Sérusier (1888)
  • France-Champagne — Pierre Bonnard (1891)
  • The Muses — Maurice Denis (1893)

Sources

← Back to the catalog