Numerous prestigious loans from private collections elegantly complete the display of 90 paintings by Maurice Denis between 1889 and 1914.
The fiery title Amour is a quote from the painter himself: “The first period of my painting is love”. His great love is his wife Martha, whose portrait appears several times in the exhibition. Martha’s face is the flame and the radiant source of artistic inspiration for the beginning of the painter’s career. A “unique” love sometimes multiplied on a single canvas, to increase the symbolist message of his painting.
Maurice Denis said it well in 1890: “Remember that a painting – before being a war horse, a naked woman, or any anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors in a certain order assembled”.
Maurice Denis, at the same time painter, theorist, esoteric, engraver is one of the founding members, with Gauguin, of the artistic movement known as the “Nabis group”. This group of painters inaugurates the first steps of the Modern Painting while going to borrow in a certain primitivism.
Like Gauguin, Maurice Denis traveled between Paris and Pont-Aven, in Brittany, in search of spirituality. His quest for mystical elevation nourished a new way of painting that opposed the realism of the Impressionists.
The Lausanne exhibition, unique in its kind, emphasizes Maurice Denis’ Catholic faith and his iconic and timeless painting. He abolished perspective and elevated color to its symbolic force. The aesthetic means are verticality, smooth color and the abstraction of Japanese prints. What counts for the artist is the technical achievement, the subject is only an anecdotal pretext.
The post-war Maurice Denis was a decorator, rather classical, inspired by Raphael and also an engraver for his great friend and traveler André Gide.
An exhibition allowing to approach the work of the artist in its globality but especially to understand its subtlety.
Exhibition at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts | PLATEFORME 10 | Lausanne
12.02.2021 – 16.05.2021
Curator : Catherine Lepdor and Isabelle Cahn
Works : 90
Guided tours by reservation: every Thursday at 6:30 pm and every Sunday at 11 am
