Maurice Denis
| Maurice Denis | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Maurice Denis by Odilon Redon
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| Born |
Maurice Denis 25 November 1870 Granville, Manche, Normandy |
| Died | 13 November 1943 (aged 72) Paris |
| Nationality | French |
| Education | École des Beaux-Arts, Académie Julian |
| Known for | Painting, drawing |
Maurice Denis (French: [dəni]; 25 November 1870 – 13 November 1943) was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.
Maurice Denis was born 25 November 1870, in Granville, Manche, a coastal town in the Normandy region of France. Waters and coastlines would remain favorite subject matter throughout his career, as would material drawn from the Bible. For such an avant-garde figure, Denis had a surprisingly broad religious streak, writing in his notebook at age fifteen, "Yes, it's necessary that I am a Christian painter, that I celebrate all the miracles of Christianity, I feel it's necessary." The Denis family was affluent, and young Maurice attended both the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, where he studied with the French figure painter and theorist Jules Joseph Lefebvre.
At the Académie, he met painters and future Nabi members including Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard; through Bonnard he also met the future Nabis Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Hermann-Paul. In 1890, they formed The Nabis. They chose "Nabi"—Hebrew for "Prophet"—because they understood they would be creating new forms of expression. The group would split apart by the end of the decade, and would influence the later work of both Bonnard and Vuillard, as well as non-Nabi painters like Henri Matisse.
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