Bonnard, jardins secrets

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) witnessed the entire avant-garde movement from the Nabis to the Surrealists, from the Fsauvists to the collective of La Revue Blanche. He saw everything, and occasionally participated, but never gave up his independence. In life as in his work, he created freedom for himself. His art is the art of sensation: an explosion of colours. He has one of those rare minds that can grasp a subject in an instant and commit it to memory, to be transported back to the studio with him – street scenes, portraits, countrysides, and nudes – hundreds of nudes. The same painting can have at once the intimacy of an interior and the abundance of a garden. Although marvellously free and non-conformist, Bonnard was nonetheless a humble and austere man. He was a great friend of Jarry, singing his Chanson du décervelage and making puppets for his theatre.

Despite his bourgeois origins, the artist led a modest life and although his paintings sold well, he let them go at a low price. But the most singular fact about this great painter of the feminine form was his relationship with women: the unsettling Misia, the enigmatic Renée, and the mysterious Marthe – his life-companion – whom he photographed and painted tirelessly, nude, as if trying to reveal her secrets. Behind the simple and sensual surface of his paintings is an entirely codified game of mirrors.

Olivier Renault is a bookseller in Paris. He was the director of the literature magazine Le Trait for ten years and is a regular contributor to Artpress and Page des Libraires. He has been living in the Montparnasse district for the last twenty years and is the author of Guide culturel de Montparnasse (Parigramme, 2012), Rouge Soutine (La Table Ronde, 2012) and Bonnard, jardins secrets (La Table Ronde, 2015).