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EDITIONS DE LA RéUNION DES MUSéES NATIONAUX
Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise
Text by Jean-Paul Bouillon, Sylvie Patry, Nathalie Bondil, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond.
Maurice Denis (1870–1943) is perhaps the last great French painter of his generation awaiting rediscovery, after his lifelong friends Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. With them, Denis co-founded the Japanese-influenced group known as the Nabis, eventually becoming its principal theoretician. In the 1890s, he remained at the forefront of the movement, and was also closely associated with Symbolism, but his work was tremendously wide-ranging in scope and style. After 1900, his links with Matisse and Cézanne, and his calls for a new classicism—based on his love of Trecento and Quattrocento murals—made him one of the most respected voices in European art. Denis' work ran the gamut of the visual arts, from easel painting to engraving and the decorative arts; after 1918, he worked increasingly on decorative projects in both religious and non-religious contexts. Reproducing many major works for the first time, this thorough survey supplies a definitive volume on one of nineteenth-century France's finest painters.
"Maurice Denis is truly at the heart of the painting of his time, as were Bonnard and Vuillard, to whom he is sometimes close, but often different. Bonnard uses colored tones that echo, oppose and mingle with each other in strictly constructed compositions. Vuillard establishes a pictorial continuum: curtain, dress, tablecloth and carpet blend into each other, creating a completely new perception of space. With Maurice Denis, the line becomes an arabesque and gives rise to a stylization of forms, as in the work of Ingres and Puvis, and later in that of Matisse. This large family of artistic thought crosses the whole of the twentieth century and finds itself expressed in the art of Alex Katz, one of the most important American painters since the 1960s…"
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 304 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 ISBN: 9782891923101 PUBLISHER: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux AVAILABLE: 2/28/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: *not available
Published by Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. Text by Jean-Paul Bouillon, Sylvie Patry, Nathalie Bondil, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond.
Maurice Denis (1870–1943) is perhaps the last great French painter of his generation awaiting rediscovery, after his lifelong friends Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. With them, Denis co-founded the Japanese-influenced group known as the Nabis, eventually becoming its principal theoretician. In the 1890s, he remained at the forefront of the movement, and was also closely associated with Symbolism, but his work was tremendously wide-ranging in scope and style. After 1900, his links with Matisse and Cézanne, and his calls for a new classicism—based on his love of Trecento and Quattrocento murals—made him one of the most respected voices in European art. Denis' work ran the gamut of the visual arts, from easel painting to engraving and the decorative arts; after 1918, he worked increasingly on decorative projects in both religious and non-religious contexts. Reproducing many major works for the first time, this thorough survey supplies a definitive volume on one of nineteenth-century France's finest painters.
