SHARING WITH ME

Like many artists, I have seen Emile Bernard’s (1868-1941) work in permanent collections around Europe without really knowing much about him. Now that there is a retrospective of his work this seemed to be the moment to go a little further. They say that he was a major artist in the development of modern art who has not always had the recognition that he deserves. I go along with the second part of this phrase but I am not really in agreement with the modernity. His early works had an affinity with Impressionism. He then launched a movement which I knew nothing about called Cloisonnist style in the late 1880’s. The composition of the paintings is divided into areas of contrasting flat color surrounded by a black line. This for me compares to the German Expressionism, Die Brücke and probably what immediate comes to mind are artists like Van Dongen, Emile Nolde and others. The same style was adopted by Van Gogh and the Nabis group with which Emile Bernard had close ties. Nudes an