Paul Sérusier

Paul Sérusier (November 9th 1864, Paris - October 7th 1927, Morlaix) is a French painter post-impressionist, associated with the movement of the Nabis.

Biography

Born in a family from easy middle-class, her father, a business man who worked in the industry of the perfume, made sure that it received a traditional education. In 1875, Sérusier was allowed with the Lycée Condorcet where he studied traditional philosophy, the Greek , the Latin and sciences. It accepted its two diplomas in 1883, of philosophy and sciences.

In 1885, after having worked in the company of a friend of its father for one short period, it entered to the Académie Julian to study the Art. Of a pleasant temperament, he sympathized quickly as well with the students as the professors. Its friendship with Maurice Denis date of this time.

He spent the summer 1888 to Bridge-Swallow-hole, in Brittany, a city which attracted many French and foreign artists then. There, its attention went on an small group of artists who turned around Emile Bernard and of Paul Gauguin. It approached them, and accepted even a free lesson of Gauguin. This one encouraged it to get rid of the imitative constraint of painting, to use of pure colors, sharp, not to hesitate to exaggerate its visions, and to give to its paintings its own decorative logic and symbolic system. Sérusier returned thus to Paris with a small table painted under the directives of Gauguin, and showed it with enthusiasm with his/her companions, thus sharing its new ideas learned from Gauguin. The table was called the Talisman . Ignited debates developed between him and the other students.

With its close relations Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Henri-Gabriel Ibels and Paul-Elie Ranson, which shared its ideas, Sérusier formed a group, the Nabis (" prophet " in Hebrew). They met regularly to speak about theoretical problems of Art, of symbolism, Occultisme and esotericism. Later, Armand Seguin, Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel joined the group. However, after the departure of Gauguin for Tahiti in 1891, the group dissolves and each one took an individual direction.

The summer 1892 Sérusier turned over in Brittany, in the small village of Huelgoat where there remained two years. It painted monumental and solid figures Breton peasants. Its pallet changed, it did not use more pure colors but attenuated them with gray.

It spent its winters to Paris, working with his friend Lugné-Poe, founder of the Théâtre of Work. Many artists Nabis, Sérusier included, worked with the decorations and costumes of the theater Symbolist. The artists expressed in this work their ideal of simplification and synthesis of several means of expression.

The year 1895, Sérusier accepted an invitation of his/her friend Jan Verkade to visit the monastery Bénédictin of Beuron, in Germany. The monk-artists of the monastery had principles according to which the laws of the Beauté divine, mytérieusement were mytérieusement hidden in the Nature, and could be revealed only with the artists having a direction of the proportions and harmony of the forms - God made the Holy Spirit according to measurement, the number and the weight.

These doctrines filled with enthusiasm it and of return to Paris, it tried to convince his friends of his innovation and its importance; but it did not meet discounted success and Sérusier distancia of her former friends.

After several voyages to Beuron it ends up settling in Brittany, and applied the doctrines of the monks by developing an art based to calculation and the measures.

Its late studies on the Egyptian art, the Primitive Italian and the Tapisserie S of the Moyen-âge led it to decorative works, measured in a certain way " out of the temps".

He taught regularly with the Académie Ranson starting from 1908.

In 1921 it published ABC of painting , a treated court in which it developed a theory of the curves and forms simple, a Théorie of the colors and a method of research of the deaf colors. It is about the report of all its esthetic research.

Sérusier dies out in 1927 with Morlaix.

References

Arthur Ellridge, Gauguin and the Nabis: Prophets off Modernism , Terrail, 1995
Claire Freches-Thory and Antoine Terrasse, Nabis , Flammarion, 2003
Patricia Eckert Boyer, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Elizabeth Prelinger, The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-garde , Rutgers University Near, 1988
Charles Chassé, Nabis and their time , Lausanne, the Library of Arts, 1960

Some of its works…

Still life with the reeds , 1904, Museum Malraux, Le Havre
the hill with the poplars , 1907, Museum Malraux, Le Havre
the shepherd Corydon , 1913, Museum Malraux, Le Havre
Seaside , 1914, oil on fabric, 65 X 92,5 cm, museum of Modern art, Liege.
the carrying ones linen , 1895, oil on fabric, 111 X 69 cm, Brest, museum of the Art schools.
Portrait of Jean Verkade , 1903, oil on fabric, 56 X 46 cm, Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer, museum Maurice Denis.
the Incantation , 1891, oil on fabric, 98 X 72 cm, Quimper, museum of the Art schools.
Spring in Pouldu , 1890, oil on fabric, 54 X 65 cm, Collection Rau, Zurich.
Breton going down to the laundrette , 1890, oil on fabric, 73,7 X 93 cm, Munich, Neue Pinakoteck.

External bonds

Sérusier in Olga' S Gallery

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