Le nabi aux belles icônes: Maurice Denis tra teoria e prassi

Abstract

In August 1890, the then very young Maurice Denis published a short essay in the pages of the Parisian magazine «Art et Critique» entitled Définition du Néo-traditionnisme. With this text, the future co-founder of the Nabis group laid the ideological foundations for the Symbolist movement ahead of his friend and colleague Gabriel Albert Aurier, the author of what is still considered the “official” manifesto of this movement: Le Symbolisme en peinture: Paul Gauguin (1892). In his text, the Granville-born painter provides his own definition of the famous five points drawn up by Aurier only two years later (ideism, symbolism, synthetism, subjectivism and decorativism), thus demonstrating that he was not only an avant-garde artist but also a keen theoretician attentive to the critical debates of his time.