The National Library of France's Richelieu site is currently hosting "Nabi Impressions," a comprehensive exhibition showcasing how a small group of revolutionary painters transformed the art of printmaking during the final decade of the 19th century. The exhibition, running until January 11, 2026, features works by renowned artists including Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Vallotton, focusing specifically on the pivotal decade of 1890-1900 when these painters excelled in the art of prints and printed images.

Curator Valérie Sueur-Hermel explains that "the Nabis were a nickname that young artists chose for themselves at the end of the 19th century to distinguish themselves from others. The word means prophet in Hebrew. They used it among themselves, making them a kind of initiates." Co-curator Céline Chicha-Castex adds that "the art they wanted to spread was that of Paul Gauguin and Japanese printmaking, a new way of seeing things." The Nabis aimed to be prophets in their own country and especially in their own time, "against all academic education." Maurice Denis, the group's theorist, described their approach as "neo-traditionalism."

The exhibition draws primarily from the collections of the National Library's Department of Prints and Photography and follows "Art is in the Street," which was presented at the Musée d'Orsay earlier this year. To illuminate the printmaking process, comparative works including preparatory drawings and trial proofs have been borrowed from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Maurice Denis Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Quimper Museum, and private collections.

The ambitious goal was to demonstrate how the Nabis embraced printed imagery "in a truly frenzied manner" between 1890 and 1900. "Their idea was to bring art into people's daily lives, to make it accessible," explains Sueur-Hermel. "On street walls in the form of posters, on wallpaper, screens, in books, sheet music, theater programs..." The exhibition provides a broad overview of these multiple formats within the elegant settings of the Mansart and Pigott galleries.

The exhibition opens with Pierre Bonnard's very first print, titled "France-Champagne," a poster that employed color lithography, a technique then primarily reserved for advertising. The Nabis, who were between 20 and 30 years old at the time, seized upon this medium to make themselves known and earn a living. Bonnard's style was innovative for the period, notably featuring black outlines defining the contours of forms and flat color areas in the manner of Paul Gauguin, the artist who had paved the way for these "prophets."

"The Nabis were not professional engravers," explains Sueur-Hermel. "They brought all their painting skills to the service of printmaking." Through these printed images, their distinctive aesthetic reached a wide audience. Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Roussel explored the resources of color lithography, while others like Vallotton and Maillol contributed to the revival of black and white woodcut engraving. This ancient technique derives its name from the plank it uses, cut along the grain of the wood.

The first printed works by the Nabis were exhibited as early as 1891 by Parisian gallery owner Le Barc de Bouteville. To explain the complex technique of color lithography, the curators present a set of works by Maurice Denis called "Concerts of the Little Brother and Little Sister." Visitors can see the initial drawing in black and white, its decomposition color by color, the lettering, and the final result from the superposition of these different layers.

The exhibition also presents stunning "series" of prints on various subjects: Parisian life for Bonnard, his interior and close ones for Édouard Vuillard, landscapes for Ker-Xavier Roussel, and intimate life and couples for Félix Vallotton. The idea of distributing sets of printed images came from publisher André Marty, who sold portfolios containing about ten prints from 1893 to 1895. Supported by an art critic, he chose to mix works by established artists like Signac and Gauguin with those of promising young Nabis.

Starting in 1899, Ambroise Vollard, the famous art dealer and publisher, distributed monographic albums composed of twelve color lithographs and a cover. "His idea was to allow buyers to frame the works to display them at home," explains curator Sueur-Hermel. Printed "in about a hundred copies and offered at a relatively accessible price," according to Chicha-Castex, these print albums sold poorly. "The everyday subjects, the use of color, but especially the revolutionary framing for the time" may have confused potential buyers, analyzes Sueur-Hermel. This proved to be a blessing for 20th and 21st-century art collectors.

In its display cases, the exhibition reveals that the Nabis were great book decorators and also contributed to the success of avant-garde publications like the famous "Revue Blanche." Their fruitful relationships with the theater world are also depicted. The Nabis collaborated with the Théâtre Libre, created in Paris in 1887, and the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, starting in 1893. They created sets, costumes, puppets, and decorated programs and sheet music. Superb color lithographs signed by Henri-Gabriel Ibels, a close associate of painter Toulouse-Lautrec, reveal that they also participated in promoting café-concerts.

The end of the exhibition illustrates the Nabis' desire to blur the boundary between fine arts and applied arts. To integrate printmaking into their contemporaries' daily environment, painters like Maurice Denis and Paul Ranson imagined motifs for wallpaper. Pink boats sailing on white scrolls, doves, trains, and even harpists decorated these tapestries with audacious tones for the time, reproduced by the Maciej Fisher workshop that designed the exhibition's beautiful scenography.

The highlight of the show is a screen created by Pierre Bonnard in 1894. A great lover of Japanese art, the painter designed at least five such screens. This one depicts the walk of nannies in a Parisian park, adorned with a frieze of carriages in single file. On an off-white background that reminded him, according to his own words, of "Place de la Concorde when there's dust and it looks like a little Sahara," the Nabi painter imagined this rather classic garden scene. The novelty lay in the transition to lithography, which led him to simplify his drawing. "What's remarkable about this screen is the way Bonnard uses empty space in the composition of these panels, in the manner of Japanese printmaking," marvels Chicha-Castex. "His friends nicknamed him the Japanese Nabi!"

The exhibition runs from September 9, 2025, to January 11, 2026, at the National Library of France, Richelieu site, located at 5 rue Vivienne in Paris. The venue is open Tuesday from 10 AM to 8 PM and Wednesday through Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM, with full admission at €10 and reduced rates at €8.