Paul Sérusier was a French painter known for his innovative use of flat shapes of color. Sérusier was notably the founder of the Nabis, a group which included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard. “Free form and color from their traditional descriptive functions in order to express personal emotions and spiritual truths,” he once advised. Born on November 9, 1864 in Paris, France, he went on to study at the Académie Juilan in 1885. While still a student, Sérusier visited the artist colony in Pont-Aven, meeting the Symbolist painters Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard, and painting the Breton villagers and landscapes. It was the theories of the Symbolists that inspired the...