Original Pierre Bonnard Poster Galerie des Ponchettes, 1955 - Mourlot

Artist Pierre Bonnard Year 1955 Exhibition Pierre Bonnard — Galerie des Ponchettes, Nice Printer Mourlot Frères, Paris Size 46.4 × 64.1 cm (18.25 × 25.25 in) Type Original vintage lithographic exhibition poster Condition A — Excellent This is an original lithographic poster printed by Mourlot Frères for a retrospective of Pierre Bonnard's work at the Galerie des Ponchettes in Nice — the city's most beloved exhibition space, set in a row of arcaded buildings along the seafront of the Quai des États-Unis, and one of the most fitting settings imaginable for a painter who had spent the last three decades of his life in the South of France. The Galerie des Ponchettes was a regular host to posthumous tributes to the great masters of modern art, and this poster — with its bold, chromatic warmth — captures the spirit of Bonnard's work with remarkable fidelity. Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), born near Paris and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts alongside Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, was a founding member of Les Nabis — the group of young painters who, inspired by Gauguin and Japanese prints, sought to make colour and pattern the primary vehicles of emotional expression rather than mere description. His early commercial work, including a celebrated poster for France-Champagne, announced from the outset an artist whose instinct for decorative impact was unmatched. But it is his later painting — above all the sun-drenched interiors, gardens and bathroom scenes from his years at Le Cannet on the Côte d'Azur — that established him as one of the supreme colourists of the 20th century. His canvases shimmer with chromatic intensity, the light of the Mediterranean absorbed and re-emitted through a palette that Matisse himself acknowledged as extraordinary. Bonnard had died in 1947 at Le Cannet, the village above Cannes where he had lived and worked throughout the war years. This 1955 poster, printed just eight years after his death, belongs to the first wave of retrospective recognition — the moment when the full breadth of his achievement began to be understood and celebrated by institutions across the South of France he had made his own. This example is in excellent condition — grade A — and is presented unframed, ready for the wall it deserves. A luminous piece — Bonnard's colour, the Côte d'Azur light, at the gallery that knew his world best.