The group was sometimes called Synthetist or Symbolist and is often now labled as Avant-Garde post Impressionism. Inspired by Gauguins use of color and rythmic pattern, the young artists celebrated design. According to Gauguin, paintings were meant to be plane surfaces covered with colors arranged in a certain order. Denis, who was only 20 at the time became the groups main theorist and wrote several articles for art magazines. Artists of the Nabis were bored by Impressionism but held a deep admiration for Gauguin.
Patterns become a new pictorial language.
Villeurs and Bonnard expressed patterns in colorful interiors where a table or a figure is often expressed in its two dimensional pattern. Design should not be just for paintings. Nabis members designed for posters, illustration, tapestry, sculpture or glasswork and blurred the distinctions of artist and designer-craftsman. Interior decoration was one of their principal activities. The first exhibition was held in 1892 but the young artists drifted apart after 1899.