Les Nabis

ナビ派 / 1888–1900 / Style / Fin de Siècle Art

A group of painters who called themselves prophets, setting out from the declaration that a picture is essentially a flat surface covered in a certain order. They extended interiors and daily life into decorative panels, lithographs, book illustration and stage design, dissolving the boundary between fine and applied art.

Les Nabis — Pierre Bonnard, France-Champagne poster, 1891 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Pierre Bonnard, France-Champagne poster, 1891 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Les Nabis — Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

At a glance

Visual cues

Compositions conceived as decorative panels
Reversals of pattern and ground
Harmonies of muted intermediate tones
Subjects of interiors and daily life

Best used for

Designing the walls of a home or shop as a continuous field between picture and wallpaper
Series of illustrations, endpapers and prints that take the everyday interior as subject

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Dictionary entry

Type: Soft, slightly irregular serifs or hand-drawn titling woven into the pattern
Composition: Tall panel formats; figures embedded in wallpaper-like pattern until motif and ground trade places
Material: Muted intermediate tones—dusty rose, olive, ochre—on matte, absorbent surfaces
Caution: Matching figure and pattern too closely turns the picture into plain wallpaper, and who is doing what disappears. Sink the figure in, but keep its contour readable.
Further study: The story of Sérusier's The Talisman / The work in decorative panels and lithography / The subjects of Intimisme

Related entries

Cloisonnism (クロワゾニスム)Same Fin de Siècle Art lineage.Compare Les Nabis and Cloisonnism
Art Nouveau (アール・ヌーヴォー)Shared effects: Luxury / Intimacy.Compare Les Nabis and Art Nouveau

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