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During his law studies in 1885, Pierre Bonnard enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris. There he meets Paul Sérusier and Maurice Denis, co-founders of the 1888 launched artist group "Nabis", the "enlightened one", who also joins Bonnard. In 1889 he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Art, where he met Edouard Vuillard. Together they study u.a. Works by Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet, but their great admiration is Paul Gauguin. In the "Salon des Indépendants" from 1891 Bonnard is represented for the first time with five paintings. He starts to deal with printmaking and designs the poster "France-Champagne". Due to the great success of this work, he gives up his legal career and devotes himself entirely to his artistic work: 1889-1902 created about 250 lithographs for posters, wall and theater decorations and illustrations, i.a. for the magazine "Revue Blanche". In 1896 his first solo exhibition takes place in the Parisian gallery Durand-Ruel. The experiences in the commercial art also influence his painting. In addition to the economy of color, the line acquires a special dynamic - it becomes the bearer of not only movement, but also of emotional expression. Bonnard initially finds his motifs in the big city of Paris: small, momentary everyday scenes, often portrayed in an unusual way. At the turn of the century, he began to break away from the elements of Art Nouveau and symbolism. The former restrained color gives way to a bright, colorful palette, the city scenes are increasingly being replaced by pastoral, idyllic scenes as well as files and interiors. In 1900 Bonnard exhibits for the first time with the "Nabis" in the gallery Bernheim-Jeune. In the following years he undertook trips to England, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Italy, mostly with his friend Vuillard, with whom he also traveled to Hamburg in 1913 at the invitation of Alfred Lichtwark. In the twenties, Bonnard developed his mature artistic style, whose unusually complex compositions and subtle, refined colourfulness left the label "post-impressionism" far behind. His life is now calmer: in 1925 he marries and finds his permanent residence a year later in Le Cannet, southern France. Larger exhibitions follow in 1932 in the Kunsthaus Zürich, 1934 in the gallery Wildenstein New York. Honors and awards accompany a painting-dedicated life that ends on January 23, 1947.

Pierre Bonnard paintings for sale