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Joseph et Mme Putiphar
Private Collection |
Ibels studied at the Académie Julian,
Paris, in 1888–89 with Bonnard and Vuillard. He became one
of the original members of the Nabis movement which included artists’
friends such as Gauguin, Utrillo, Felix Valotton and Emile Bernard.
He joined in the early group ventures such as printmaking, puppet
plays and theatre design, but he was never involved with the more
esoteric Symbolist aspirations of some of the group’s leading
members.
He was also part of the Avant Garde period (1885-1910).
He first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891
and participated in the Nabis’s group shows at Louis Le Barc
de Boutteville’s gallery. With Edouard Vuillard and Maurice
Denis, he was quick to attract public attention, the nature of
his work earning him the sobriquet ‘le Nabis journaliste’.
 |
Au cirque published in L'estampe originale,
1893
Color lithograph
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco |
Ibels’ works were bold and expressively
graphic, typical of the artists of these movements in that their
work included not only fine art, but early forms of graphic design
and advertising as well, as viewed in lithographs and posters
for theaters and cabarets, and book illustrations (Gauguin, Utrillo,
and Ibels).
His art was inspired by contemporary life, with
subjects drawn from the spectacle of modern Paris, particularly
from the café, circus and boxing ring. Both in subject
and technique he can be likened to such artists as Adolphe Willette,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who was his friend and began lithography
at Ibels’ insistence) and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen,
and his work shares many characteristics with theirs, notably
an economy of line and simplicity of shapes and colors. Such features
derived in Ibels’ case from the art of Honoré Daumier,
Japanese printmakers and Paul Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group.
- Museums:
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- Van Gogh Museum (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
in Les Nabis Collection
- The University of Michigan Museum of
Art
- Bibliography:
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- Van Gogh Museum (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation)
in Les Nabis Collection
- The University of Michigan Museum of
Art
The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L.
Macy (Accessed 30 March 2003), <http://www.groveart.com>
- © Oxford University Press 2003
