Ker-Xavier Roussel 1867-1944

Born in 1867 in Lorry‑lès‑Metz (Moselle, esatern France) and raised in Paris, Ker‑Xavier Roussel belongs to that generation of artists with Sérusier, Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard, invented the Nabi language. Very early linked to Vuillard, whom he met at the Lycée Condorcet, he shared with him the training at the Académie Julian before joining, in 1889, the group that advocated a synthetic, decorative art freed from naturalism. But Roussel quickly set himself apart: where his friends painted the intimate or the everyday, he turned to a pastoral and mythological universe, populated by nymphs, fauns and bathers, transposing an imagined Arcadia into modernity.

His early works, still marked by the Nabis’ flat planes and arabesques, soon opened onto vast compositions where color becomes breath and light. Settled in L’Étang‑la‑Ville from 1899 (west of Paris), he found in that rolling landscape the natural setting for his sensual visions, multiplying variations on the female nude in nature.

A daring colorist, he deployed a vibrant, sometimes almost Fauvist palette, which gives his scenes an atmosphere at once carnal and unreal. Highly sought after as a decorator, he produced large ensembles for private residences, asserting a rare sense of mural rhythm.

Recognized as an artist in his lifetime, Roussel left a singular oeuvre in which mythology, color and dream unite to create one of the most lyrical imaginaries of French modernity.