Pierre Bonnard

Painter and lithographer, born in Paris, France. He trained at the Académie Julien, then joined the group called Les Nabis, which included Denis and Vuillard, with whom he formed the Intimist group. Ignoring the movement towards abstraction, he continued to paint interiors and landscapes, in which everything is subordinated to the subtlest rendering of light and colour effects.

Pierre Bonnard (October 3, 1867 – January 23, 1947) was a French painter and printmaker.

He was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses. However, he had also attended art classes on the side, and soon decided to become an artist.

In 1891 he met Toulouse-Lautrec and began showing his work at the Salon des Indépendants.

In his twenties he was a part of Les Nabis, a group of young artists committed to creating work of symbolic and spiritual nature.

Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with small brushmarks and close values.

In 1938 there was a major exhibition of his work along with Vuillard's at the Art Institute of Chicago. He finished his last painting, The Almond Tree in Flower, a week before his death in Le Cannet, on the French Riviera, in 1947. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City organized a posthumous retrospective of Bonnard's work in 1948, although originally it was meant to be a celebration of the artists eightieth birthday.

Two major exhibitions of Bonnard's work took place in 1998: February through May at the Tate Gallery in London, and from June through October at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.