Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

French Painter, 1868 - 1947

Pierre Bonnard a French painter, is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most complex and masterful painters. Although the public loved his happily colored landscapes, his well-lit scenes of domestic life, his erotic and classically posed nudes, and his penetrating self-portraits, when he died Pierre Bonnard was viewed by many critics as a primitive generator of color.

In his twenties, Pierre Bonnard was a member of a group of artists known as the Nabis.

The Nabis manipulated color and composition to evoke a feeling or a mood in their art. During the decades that followed, Bonnard created posters, produced numerous sets of lithographs, designed furniture and stained glass, and, painted— street scenes of Paris, everyday snapshots of his family in their garden, and voluptuous nude portraits of his reclusive model and mistress (later his wife), Marthe.

In 1914, when Bonnard was 46, he went through a period of self-doubt and reassessment that led to his most complex and carefully wrought paintings. In these late canvases, Pierre Bonnard showed qualities of daring and invention that outshone the fantasies of the Surrealists, the color of the Fauves and the multiple viewpoints of the Cubists.

Pierre Bonnard established his reputation with his modern, radical approaches to art and created color-strewn scenes of everyday life where light, form and focus were carefully manipulated.

Find beautiful framed art prints by Pierre Bonnard.

More art like Pierre Bonnard:
Les Nabis
Still life