The mysterious painting reproductions of Paul Serusier

Educated at the Académie Julian in Paris, Paul Sérusier discovered pictorial freedom under the mentorship of Paul Gauguin. This theoretician and creator of French nationality blossomed in the wake of the Pont-Aven school, marking the transition to post-impressionism. He is the founder and the theoretical conscience of the Nabis group, advocating an aesthetic based on spiritual and decorative emotion.

His pictorial approach revolves around synthetism, removing traditional modeling in favor of large flat areas of pure and arbitrary colors. He is fond of peasant scenes, mystical landscapes of Brittany, and esoteric compositions imbued with Celtic folklore. The chromatic palette uses bold harmonies of yellows, blues, and muted greens, surrounded by dark outlines to affirm the two-dimensionality of the medium. The absence of classical atmospheric perspective deliberately flattens the visual space. The decisive stylistic break he initiates materializes on the famous wooden panel “The Talisman”. The simplified approach to figures is expressed with poetry in his “Bathers”. The decorative and spiritual aspect of his painting also irrigates “Two Breton Women under a Flowering Apple Tree”.

The aesthetic concepts he formalizes free color from its strict descriptive function, transforming the act of painting into an intellectual approach. His transmission of synthetism directly contributes to the emergence of modern decorative art and the beginnings of abstraction.

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