Henri-Gabriel Ibels

French, 1867–1936

Birth placeParis, France

Death placeParis, France

Biography(b Paris, 30 Nov 1867; d Paris, Feb 1936). French printmaker, illustrator and painter. He became one of the original members of the Nabis as an art student at the Académie Julian, Paris, in 1888–9. He joined in the early group ventures such as printmaking, puppet plays and theatre design, but he was never involved with the more esoteric Symbolist aspirations of some of the group’s leading members. He first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 and participated in the Nabis’s group shows at Louis Le Barc de Boutteville’s gallery. With Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis, he was quick to attract public attention, the nature of his work earning him the sobriquet ‘le Nabi journaliste’. His art was inspired by contemporary life, with subjects drawn from the spectacle of modern Paris, particularly from the café, circus and boxing ring. Both in subject and technique he can be likened to such artists as Adolphe Willette, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and his work shares many characteristics with theirs, notably an economy of line and a simplicity of shapes and colours. Such features derived in Ibels’s case from the art of Honoré Daumier, Japanese printmakers and Paul Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group.

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