Maurice Denis

Quotes

• “Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a female nude or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”
• “The profoundness of our emotions comes from the sufficiency of these lines and these colors to explain themselves.. ..everything is contained in the beauty of the work.”
• “Art remains a sure refuge, the hope of a reason in life from now on, and the consoling thought that little beauty manifests itself in our lives, and that we are continuing the work of Creation.. .Therefore the work of art has merit, inscribed in the marvelous beauty of flowers, of light, in the proportion of trees and shape of waves, and the perfection of faces; to inscribe our poor and lamentable life of suffering, of hope and of thought.”
• “Think of late paintings where Christ is the central figure.. .Remember the large mosaics of Rome. Reconcile the employment of large-scale decorative means and the direct emotions of nature.”
• “..the classical aesthetic offers us at the same time a method of thinking and a method of wanting to be, a moral and at the same time a psychology.. .The classical tradition as a whole, by the logic of the effort and the greatness of results, is in some way parallel with the religious tradition of humanity.”
• “The common error of us all [in late Impressionism] was to search above all for the light. It would have been better first to search for the Kingdom of God and his justice, that is to say for the expression of our spirit in beauty, and the rest would have arrived naturally.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born

Maurice Denis , ( 1870-11-25 ) 25 November 1870, Granville, Manche , France

Died

13 November 1943 (1943-11-13) (aged 72), Paris, France

Education

École des Beaux-Arts , Académie Julian

Known for

Painting, drawing

via Wikipedia infobox

Key dates

Born

25 November 1870

Died

3 November 1943

via Wikidata · CC0

Wikidata facts

Instance of

human

Given name

Maurice

Gender

male

Citizenship

France

Place of birth

Granville

Place of death

Hôpital Cochin

Occupation

designer

Educated at

Académie Julian

Employer

Académie Ranson

Languages spoken

French

Native language

French

Notable work

Homage to Cézanne

Field of work

painting

Genre

genre art

Movement

Les Nabis

Image

Maurice Denis - photo Henri Manuel.jpg

Work location

France

via Wikidata · CC0