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Paul S¨¦rusier
(1864-1927)
Paul S¨¦rusier was born in 1864 in Paris into a well-to-do middle-class family. His father was a successful businessman in the perfume industry, who gave his son a good education. In 1875 Paul entered the Condorcet Lyc¨¦e, where he studied classical philosophy, Greek and Latin, and the sciences. He graduated from the Lyc¨¦e in 1883 with two baccaulaureats ¨C in philosophy and in the sciences.
In 1885, after a short period of work in the company of his father's friend, Paul entered the Julian Academy to study art. Having a lovely disposition he soon became very popular both with students and professors. His lifelong friendship with Maurice Denis started there.
In 1888, S¨¦rusier arrived at Pont-Aven in Brittany, a town popular among French and foreign artists. There S¨¦rusier's attention was attracted by a group of artists who crowded around Emile Bernand and Paul Gauguin. S¨¦rusier got their acquaintance and even received a lesson from Gauguin. Gauguin encouraged the young painter to release himself from the constraints of imitative painting, to use pure colors, not to hesitate to exaggerate his impressions, and to give to the painting his own, decorative logic and symbolic system.
S¨¦rusier returned to Paris with a small painting, drawn under Gauguin's guidance, and showed it enthusiastically to his friends, sharing the new ideas that he learned from Gauguin. They called the painting The Talisman. S¨¦rusier began active propaganda, which according to Maurice Denis caused passionate debates among the students. Together with the friends who shared the new ideas, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Maurice Denis (1870-1943), Henri Ibels (1867-1936) and Paul Ranson (1862-1909), S¨¦rusier formed a group, which they called Nabis (Hebrew "prophets"). They met regularly to discuss theoretical problems of art, symbolism, occult sciences and esotericism. Later, Armand Seguin, Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) and Kerr-Xavier Roussel (1867-1944) joined the group. However, after Gauguin's departure to Tahiti, in 1891, the group gradually fell apart and its members developed separately in different directions.
In the summer of 1892 S¨¦rusier returned to Brittany, to the small village Huelgoat. Huelgoat became the place of his work for the next two years. His subjects were Breton peasants, their figures monumental and solid. The painter's palette too had changed, he no longer used pure colors, but toned them down with gray.
S¨¦rusier spent his winters in Paris, working with his friend Lugn¨¦-Poe, founder of Th¨¦atre de l'Oeuvre. Many of the Nabis artists participated in the scene decoration and costume design of the Symbolist plays of the theater, S¨¦rusier among them. The theater made it possible for them to try out on a large scale their principles of simplifi.... |
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