page_title: Gisbert Combaz
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Gisbert Combaz / Work
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: 1er Congres International des Avocats Bruxelles Aout 1897
context_page_description: Gisbert Combaz or Ghisbert Combaz was a Belgian painter, lithographer, illustrator, poster artist, furniture designer, sculptor, art educator, art historian and lawyer. He originally trained and practised as a lawyer, but gave up his legal career to dedicated himself to art education and art. He was one of the leading Belgian Art Nouveau artists. Despite his talents as a painter, he is now mainly known for his poster designs and postcards as well as his First World War drawings expressing his hatred for the German occupiers. His work showed a strong influence of his in-depth study of Japanese and Chinese art.
context_section_description: Gisbert Combaz was a versatile personality who combined a variety of artistic pursuits with scholarly studies and academic education.  He is mainly known for poster design and postcards and was active as a lithographer, illustrator, furniture designers and potter. He was talented painter whose works show the inspiration of Maurice Denis who also directed him towards religious subjects. His paintings have a decorative character and a great tenderness of tone. He was one of the principal protagonists of the Art Nouveau movement in Belgium.
  He was a prolific designer of posters.  At the end of the 19th century, the poster was a successful new medium that reflected the aspirations of the bourgeoisie. Aside from encouraging consumption, it evoked moments of pleasure and lightness that were part of the leisure and entertainment of the affluent and influential population.He designed many posters for exhibitions of the artist circle La Libre Esthétique. He developed a personal style which remains very recognizable. It is inspired by calligraphy and Japanese prints. The iconographic repertoire of Japanese artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige were an inspiration for his compositions. The reference work was clearly theHokusai Manga, published in 1815 and composed of 15 volumes. From 1897 Combaz designs different posters for the annual exhibitions of the artistic group La Libre Esthétique. Characteristic of his posters is there use of a central theme, such as a boat, a tree, a peacock or an eagle. In addition, his posters are also characterized by a very bright color palette. Combaz mixes the Japanese print style with Art Nouveau elements such an arabesques.  Through these posters Combaz gave the Art Nouveau a very powerful and modern form.
  Combaz was very effective in transposing the Japanese wood block print style known as ukiyo-e to the medium of posters.  In his Poster for the 1895 Expositions Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Arts Appliques at La Maison d’art, Brussels, Combaz succeeded like the Japanese masters to express the maximum with a minimum of resources. With the motif of the sailboat treated in a single flat color, his poster gains a great expressiveness equal to that of Japanese prints. Combaz wrote in the journal L'Art moderne that the quality of the Japanese landscapes is their chromatic unity: in each print there is a dominant palette which, by simplifying the impression, makes it strong and confers to these pictures a character of powerful homogeneity. These characteristics were clearly transposed by Combaz to his posters.
  Combaz' work further shows the influence of contemporary movements such as cloisonnism and pointillism. His early lithographs are based on a few flat decorative shapes. He then developed towards a cloisonne style of patterned images - birds, figures, land and seascapes - enclosed by a thick dark line. After 1906 he blended cloisonnism and pointillism as shown in some gouaches of oversized flowers in particular of orchids.
  Combaz further designed book covers and postcards.  Particularly well known are his postcards with designs of the four elements, scenes of the ocean and fishermen, expressions and proverbs.  He further created a number of drawings that expressed the horror of the Belgians at the atrocities committed by the German occupiers during the First World War.  One of his drawings called Louvain shows the terror of the citizens of Louvain at the burning down of their town by German soldiers on 25 August 1914. Combaz depicted in very graphic detail the horrified people fleeing the town with flames visible in the background of the drawing.
  He also tried his hand at sculpture and exhibited sculptures of a lion and a peacock at the Triannual Salon of Brussels in 1919.
caption: Poster for the First International Congress of Lawyers in Brussels in August 1897
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