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PIERRE BONNARD'S YOUTH
Pierre Bonnard was born on October 3, 1867 in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris (France). Pierre Bonnard had a happy and careless youth as the son of a prominent official of the French Ministry of War. In 1886, Pierre Bonnard entered the University of Paris to study law. Only one year later, Pierre decided to take an additional course at the the Académie Julien. This is where he met up with artists such as Paul Sérusier. Together they created the French art group Les Nabis.
PIERRE BONNARD AS AN ARTIST
Starting from the year 1890, Pierre Bonnard created color lithographs in a studio which he shared with fellow Nabis members Vuillard and Denis. Throughout the remainder of his career, Bonnard continued and expanded the impressionists' concern for depicting the personal environment of the artist. His naturalism, however, was merely a starting point for striking innovations in color and the construction of perspective. After 1920 intense colors dissolve forms yet celebrate the painter's sensuous delight in the lush southern French landscape and, above all, the beauty of the female nude.
Bonnard's entire stylistic evolution offers a transition from impressionism to a coloristic, abstract art. Critics now recognize the importance of Bonnard's contribution to the development of abstraction. During his lifetime, however, they often found his work old-fashioned, because of his commitment to figuration and the narrow scope of his themes.
PIERRE BONNARD'S DEATH
Pierre Bonnard died in Le Cannet on January 23, 1947.
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