Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) concocted gentle deliriums of color in quiet domestic scenes: views of a table set for lunch, a garden view, a woman adjusting a bouquet or, most famously, the artist's wife bathing, all infused with an infectious chromatic delight. "It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms and character using nothing but color," he once wrote, "without recourse to values." Bonnard lavishes his domestic scenes with a palpable tenderness that later led to his style (and that of his colleague Eduoard Vuillard) being dubbed "Intimiste." In the 1880s Bonnard was a founding member of the Nabi group, along with his close friends Paul Sèrusier, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson and Edouard Vuillard. Their Post-Impressionist aesthetic favored emotional tangibility over observational truth, and their paintings reveled in heightened effects of pattern, prompted by a shared predilection for Japanese decorative arts and prints. In Bonnard's case, this predilection led to an experimentation with many forms, such as lithography, illustration, interior design and photography. For this catalogue and the exhibition it accompanies, the Fondation Beyeler has gathered an extraordinary selection of Bonnard's paintings from institutions and private collections around the world, compiling an ideal introduction to Bonnard's life-affirming vision.