An ode to love! Learn more about the origin of Amour, Maurice Denis' print series, in this romantic exhibition.
The French artist Maurice Denis (1870-1943) created the romantic print series Amour in 1899. It was inspired by the love poems Denis wrote for Marthe Meurier, his later wife, in his journal.
Amour is an ode to Marthe and love in all its forms: from domestic to physical and from chivalrous to divine.
The Amour series consists of thirteen colour lithographs. With their refined colours, soft lines and detailed patterns, the prints are the crème de la crème of avant-garde lithography.
Denis worked on the series for years, making countless sketches, drawings and proofs. In the exhibition, you can see the colour lithographs together with his journal entries, design drawings and proofs.
You can follow each step of the creative process between artist and printer and witness the journey from proof to perfection. Publisher Ambroise Vollard and especially master printer Auguste Clot were also critical to the genesis of the series.
In the video, designer and printer Sarai de Haan explains how to make a lithograph. Dutch spoken, English subtitled.
Maurice Denis was one of the founders of Les Nabis. This group of young artists banded together around 1890 in a shared artistic quest to achieve 'beauty beyond visible reality.'
Besides Denis, the group included Pierre Bonnard, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Félix Vallotton and Edouard Vuillard. Their great model was the Symbolist artist Paul Gauguin.
The Van Gogh Museum is conducting in-depth research into the series of prints by artists from the Nabis group. This research project From Proof to Perfection is supported by the Getty Paper Project initiative and the Elise Wessels Foundation.
The Van Gogh Museum has been collecting prints by these fin-de-siècle (1890-1905) artists for years. Moreover, the museum also collects prints by artists of an earlier generation, namely contemporaries and friends of Vincent van Gogh, such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard.
The exhibition Maurice Denis: Amour is made possible by the support from the Getty Foundation through its Paper Project initiative.
