 | Between 31 October 2006 - 21 January 2007 the famous Musee d'Orsay in Paris will present a new and interesting exhibition of photographs taken by Maurice Denis, a well-known artist who had a tremendous influence over his generation. The 80 photographs presented in the exhibition have been taken by Denis as snapshots, presenting his family or being portraits of the writers and artists that were his friends, such as Vuillard, Roussel or Gide. The whole lot has been donated to the museum by the inheritors of Maurice Denis. |
It is the first time that Denis's photographs are being assembled into an exhibition, and compositions such as the portraits of Bonnard or Vuillard reveal an original vision, strongly connected to the way Denis worked for his paintings. As the other members of the Nabis group, Maurice Denis began photographing scenes of everyday family life in 1890, and continued to do so until 1920, taking a series of interesting snapshots, featured in the exhibition. Some of his best works were later copied and enlarged by Eugene Druet, his agent and also a master of photography, who had previously worked for Rodin.
For Maurice Denis these snapshots had the role of documenting the birth and growth of his children, as well as the most unimportant events in his family's life, and the stilystic link between his photographs and paintings is real tight. His main theme and obsession was always family and especially maternity, which he sacralised. But most of these snapshots are characterised by their subjective character and the lack of interest for the slightest mark of realism. His characters are presented rather blurry, every element being an expression of emotion and not a representation of reality. Denis chose mainly to to abstractize forms and their decorative values, and his training as a painter led him to adopt a personal esthetics.
Maurice Denis (1870-1943) was the theoretician of the Nabi group and one of the most important and influential artists of his time. His creations, strongly marked by poetical symbolism, would lately influence the artists in the first four decades of the XX century. Passionate about the artistic and cultural debates of the century, by the 1890s Maurice Denis began to experiment with a daring style of woriking, his small canvases being special due to the intensity and vast area of colors. Later, after studying Italian art, he began to produce largem compositions, which marked his return to Clasicism..
October 2006
