Georges Lacombe

A French Symbolist painter, sculptor and graphic artist, a member of the Nabi group. As a landscape painter, the author of plot paintings and a sculptor, Lacombe explored Symbolist themes and interpreted them in his own way. Paintings and sculptures by Georges Lacombe are included in the collections of many museums around the world.

Key ideas:

– Like other Nabis artists, Lacombe created canvases based on the legacy of his older contemporaries — Impressionists and Symbolists. In his works, the characteristic features of the established style of art nouveau appeared: the flatness of the forms and the decorative color, curved, whimsical lines of the contours.

– Refusing from the rules of academic perspective as artificial, Lacombe refuses to copy nature and seeks to reflect his own world in canvases and sculptures. His desire to paint “concisely and simply” and admiration for decoration leads the artist to an archaic painting manner.

– The sculptural achievements of Lacombe are truly grand. This did not prevent him from becoming a very significant painter, although some art historians and critics somewhat downplayed the artistic value of his paintings in comparison with the plasticity and emotional impact of the master’s sculptural works on the viewer.

– A distinctive feature of Lacombe’s work is that in his plot paintings and sculptures there are echoes or references to either a myth or a legend, a literary work or a sacred scripture. There are often parallels with the art of the past.