A movement that breaks the rule of painting… This is what offers Paris Musée du Luxembourg from March 13 to June 30, 2019 with an exhibition focusing on Les Nabis art, called Les Nabis et le décor [Les Nabis and background]. A retrospective – the first in France – focusing on this post-impressionist avant-garde art trend knocking “the boarder between fine arts and applied arts down”.

An exhibition focusing on the question of the decorum as a “founding principle of the unity of the creation”, in a global movement of renewal by Les Nabis, the idea has been created in England before spreading all over Spain with Catalan modernism and slowly all over Europe. A “specific experience of total art” emerging from “a dialog between artists and a commune admiration for Japanese art”.

Etchings, tapestry, screens, stained-glass window, wallpaper… As many supports allowing to extend “their technical experiments” in the field of painting and to develop “a new stylistic grammar” with soft, winding lines with bright colors and a depth-less perspective. And artists that stand out as true pioneers of the genre such as Vuillard, Bonnard, Ranson, Maurice Denis and even Sérusier for an art that includes Beautiful into homes on a daily basis. The exhibition tells the story of this movement and offers a new light on the period’s furniture art.