It was a meeting with Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier in 1908 that influenced the young Jean Souverbie to take up an artistic career. Led by these two members of the Nabis group, Souverbie enrolled at the Académie Ranson in 1916, where he befriended Bonnard, Vuillard and Vallotton.

Cubist tendencies were apparent in his work of the 1920s as a result of his contact with the work of Braque. However, his sensuousness allowed him to combine the cubist vocabulary with a more traditional naturalism in order to create his voluptuous, classical nudes. His monumental figures, his taste for allegorical subject matter and simplicity of composition reveal his interest in the great French classical painter, Poussin.
<...