Georges Lacombe was a French sculptor and painter. He was a member of the Nabi group.
Background
Georges Lacombe was born on June 18, 1868 in Versailles, Yvelines, France in the bosom of a family with artistic inclinations; his father was a furniture builder and his mother, Laura Lacombe (1834-1924) practiced painting and engraving and was a regular in the artistic circles of the time. Therefore, since child George lived in his own home meetings of painters of the time, and grew under their influence.
Education
He received his artistic training at the Académie Julian from the impressionists Alfred Philippe Roll and Henri Gervex.
Career
The Lacombe all frequented various painters, such as Alfred Roll, Henri Gervex or Georges Bertrand, friends of the family and that tutelaron initiation of Georges Lacombe fine arts.
At the age of twenty-four he made friendship with the painter Paul Sérusier, very attracted by the primitivist aesthetic of the nabis, who soon became a supporter and drove to Lacombe to the same aesthetic inclination.
From 1982, both began to make oil paintings and watercolors that reflected the Brittany coast landscapes, always from a perspective influenced by Japanese aesthetics and the nabis school. This artistic group emerged at the end of the 19th century in France, around the figure of the painter Paul Gauguin; the "prophets", name of the artistic movement, practiced an aesthetic of simple shapes and pure colors, carried away by the influence of the works of the ancient cultures, like the Japanese, or of contemporary movements such as modernism, the school of Pont-Aven and the Cloisonnismo. In 1888, the group included the aforementioned Sérusier, along with Antony Roussel, Jean Edouard Vuillard, Paul Élie Ranson, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Gabriel Ibels, along with Lacombe, who opted for the sculpture from its accession to the group, so it is known as the "sculptor nabi".
In 1891 he presented an exhibition his first sculptures nabis, four statuettes that were playing with the symbolism of the theme and formal simplicity. The figure of his father, who worked as a hobby wood, influenced the style of Lacombe, and led the search forms simple and crude, applied on issues rooted in symbolism. This formal simplicity was increased when he personally met Paul Gauguin, between 1893 and 1894.
The work of Georges Lacombe moves formally on the terrain of the nabis, i.e. the refusal of realism and use of reproduction techniques more raw, closer to an aesthetically simple interpretation of alleged mystical depth issues. An example is his "Magdalen" (Museum of Lille), or "Bed" (1894-96, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), where the artist draws a metaphor about life and death. Also conducted numerous carved wooden busts, including those of Bertrand, Bonnard, Denis, Roussel and his friend Paul Sérusier. Interested in the decorative arts, he collaborated with his friend Paul Ranson puppet theatre; together with Sérusier, he also performed various panels for the representations of this.
Georges Lacombe died in Alençon, Orne on June 29, 1916.