Maurice Denis - "Children kissing or Claire and Paul", 1940, lithograph signed and justified in pencil

Maurice Denis : (1870-1943) was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art. He was born in 1870, in Granville, a coastal town in the Normandy region of France. Waters and coastlines would remain favorite subject matter throughout his career, as would material drawn from the Bible. For such an avant-garde figure, Denis had a surprisingly broad religious streak. Maurice attended both the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. At the Académie, he met painters and future Nabi members including Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard; through Bonnard he also met the future Nabis Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Hermann-Paul. In 1890, they formed The Nabis. They chose "Nabi"—Hebrew for "Prophet"— because they understood they would be creating new forms of expression. The group would split apart by the end of the decade, and would influence the later work of both Bonnard and Vuillard, as well as non-Nabi painters like Henri Matisse. After Les Nabis, Denis went on to focus on religious subjects and murals. In 1922, he published his collected historical and theoretical work as "Nouvelles théories sur l’art moderne, sur l’art sacré"— that is, "New Theories of Modern and Sacred Art." The subjects of his mature works include landscapes and figure studies, particularly of mother and child. But his primary interest remained the painting of religious subjects. Denis was among the first artists to insist on the flatness of the picture plane — one of the great starting points for modernism, as practiced in the visual arts. In his famous proposal for the definition of painting, offered in 1890, he stated: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." Denis died in Paris of injuries resulting from an automobile accident in November 1943.

Musée d'Evreux (France)
Das Museum Folkwang (Germany)
The Bridgestone Museum of art Ishibashi Foundation (Japan)
Musée des Beaux Arts de Nantes (France)
Le musée d'Orsay (France)
The Thyssen Bornemisza Collection (Spain)
Kröller-Müller Museum (Netherlands)
Queensland art Gallery (Australia)
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) (The USA)
Nykytaiteen museo Kiasma (Finland)
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (The USA)
Carnegie Museum of art (The USA)
Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg (France)
Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne (France)
Musée des Beaux arts Orléans (France)
Musée des Beaux Arts d'Alger (Algeria)
Musée cantonal des Beaux arts, Lausanne (Switzerland)
Kunsthalle Bremen (Germany)
Musée Maurice Denis (France)
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec (France)
Musée des Beaux arts de Nancy (France)
National Museum of Western Art & Matsukata Collection (Japan)
Musée Unterlinden (France)
Musée des Beaux arts de Lyon (France)
Musée départemental de l'Oise (France)
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (Germany)
Auckland Art Gallery (Australia)
The Spencer and Marlène Hays Collection (The USA)
Musée des beaux arts de Limoges (France)
Musée des Beaux arts de Caen (France)
Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper (France)
Musée des beaux-arts de Pont-Aven (France)
Musée des beaux arts de Brest (France)
Utah Museum of Fine Art (The USA)
Brauer Museum of Art - Valparaiso University (The USA)
Musée des Beaux Arts, Montréal (Canada)
Heckscher Museum of Art (The USA)
MacKenzie Art Gallery (Canada)
Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum (Japan)
Arkas Sanat Merkezi (Turkey)
Hamburger Kunsthalle (Germany)
Collection Lucile Audouy (France)
Musée des beaux-arts Tours (France)
Musée Rolin (France)
Musée des beaux arts de Rennes (France)
Musée du Faouët (France)
Musée des Augustins (France)