Paul Sérusier

(b Paris, France 1864; d Morlaix, France 1927) French painter. An Impressionist painter belonging both to the Nabi group and to the Pont-Aven school, Paul Sérusier was a powerful figure within these two movements. It was he who transmitted the aesthetic principles of "synthétisme" (the synthesis of impressions of nature and painting), originally formulated by Gauguin in Brittany in the summer of 1888. Gauguin encouraged Sérusier to give up the imitative constraints of painting, and to use instead pure, lively colours without hesitation and to exaggerate forms if the result had a decorative and symbolic logic. (Credit: Christie’s, Paris, Art Impressionniste et Moderne, December 1, 2006, Lot 79).