Parisian artists who have become prophets of color come to La Pedrera

Art history truly lives on. In this case, the myth represented the basic act: Talisman (1888) –no podía faltar en La Pedrera– Paul Sérusier (Paris, 1864 – Morlaix, 1927). Yes, celador of the Julian Academy, painted under the direct instructions of Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven a landscape that accurately reproduced the visible world and used color to suggest feelings.

When Paul Sérusier returned to Paris, this song moved and transformed his companions. Maurice Denis – also a Nabís member – details the account: “[…] Sérusier us habló de Paul Gauguin y nus enseño, no mystery, pure tapa to which you can add paisaje in the shape, synthetically expressed in mauve, purple, green, and other pure colors, such as those of tube salts, in cases mixed with white. “What does this tree look like?” asked Gauguin in the Bois d’Amour. Is it really green? Entonce he gave green, green is better than her palette; Is this shade a bit blue? Don’t bother painting it as blue as you can.”

The theory of Gauguin’s color, the ideas of Paul Sérusier stimulated the enthusiasm of the young people of the Julian Academy, who began to meet, discuss new ideas and create joint exhibitions from 1888 to 1900, in which they dispersed. They called themselves Nabis, derived from Hebrew I don’t knowthe prophets. Considering your differences, The Nabs were held together around the idea of ​​an essentially decorative art.

In addition to the mentioned, Paul Sérusier and Maurice Denis, the initial group was integrated by Paul-Élie Ranson, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Later we joined Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Georges Lacombe, Aristide Maillol, Jozsef-Rippl-Rónai, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton and Jan Verkade.

A la luz de esta relación de artistas, hoy en día nos parece que difícilmente se pueden aglutinar no ya bajo un proyecto conjunto, sino unas inquietudes compartidas. Son artistas de sensibilidades muy diferentes y de talento muy desigual (en este sentido, algunas de las piezas exhibidas se nos antojan simplemente kitsch).

Acaso se tendría que reflexionar sobre el significado de las jóvenes agrupaciones de artistas (¿quizás marcas o eslóganes?) tan frecuentes en el arte contemporáneo que aparecen como la promesa de un nuevo amanecer y se eclipsan cuando sus integrantes se han consolidado en el mercado.

But what exactly do the Nabos represent? For a better explanation, the exhibition is divided by the thematic relationship between other chapters: “Parisian life”, “Theatre, music, spectacle”, “Symbolism. Between esotericism, religion and mysticism”, “Paisajes and gardens”, “Modern decoration”… But no Let’s decide These kernels could conveniently be applied to other expressions such as Impressionism.

The subtitle of the exhibition is significant, De Bonnard to Vuillardbecause these are the painters who achieved the greatest project and critical happiness of the Nabíov couple. Let us not share the general enthusiasm for Bonnard. It is said to uncover the secret life of the city, revealing unintentional and unseen situations in public space.

I also remember the fascination of Ràfols Casamada – he was also a painter, and indeed a good connoisseur of the craft and the secrets of the craftsman – for this artist highlight a particular pin made with colorful touchesbut sometimes they are also empty, giving them a strange hypnotic vibe.

We apologize for not informing you of these properties: for us Bonnard is a derivative of Impressionismthe pleasant things of Parisian life: the tyrant, the street, the spectacle. Vuillard is a different universe; for a reason it was classified as an intimate painting.

Vuillard at his best is a little guy – and he shows good examples at La Pedrera – describing interiors, views of houses with half-advertised characters. However, it is about everyday places transformed into poetry and charged with psychological effects Due to the optical ambiguities, a certain amount of pictorial texture with which the space was constructed, which represented a virtue that the figures appeared or disappeared.

It is no exception that Jean-Édouard Vuillard has been mentioned as the equivalent of Stéphane Mallarmé, precisely for the dissolution of materiality, or Marcel Proust for the world that follows, between the colors and the colors it evokes. Finally, we mentioned this set of tasks earlier he represented sufficient power and strength to counter the weakness of the curatorship.