Pierre Bonnard: Observing Nature

The French artist Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a successful painter, draughtsman, photographer, printmaker, illustrator, and interior designer and his works continue to surprise and overwhelm new generations of art lovers. This handsome catalogue brings together more than 110 paintings, drawings, lithographs, and photographs, concentrating on works from both public and private collections, and focusing on the evolution of Bonnard's artistic career in the twentieth century. It follows the artist's stylistic and iconographic development, giving a comprehensive view of Bonnard's career from his early Nabi works of 1890-1900 to his large decorations of 1905-1912 and his various nudes, portraits and landscapes of the 1920s and 1930s. The book closes with a group of stunning paintings and works on paper--predominantly still lifes, sublime nudes, portraits, and Mediterranean landscapes--created in the late 1930s through World War II. Pierre Bonnard offers new insights into one of the most complex yet highly consistent artists of the twentieth century whose work was and still is influential on modern painters. From a contemporary perspective, Bonnard appears to many as a profoundly radical artist whose works have an extraordinary power to fascinate and inspire the viewer.