A World of Melancholy, Exile, and Nostalgia

In February 1926, the art critic Waldemar George coined the term “Neo-Romantics” when reviewing an exhibition at Paris’s Galerie Druet of young artists, all former students at the Académie Ranson, their  teachers Edouard Vuillard, Félix Vallotton, and Maurice Denis. Among those included in the exhibition were two French painters, Christian “Bébé” Bérard (1902–49) and Thérèse Debains (1897–1975), a Dutchman, Kristians Tonny (1907–77), and three Russians, all refugees from the October Revolution of 1917, Pavel Tchelitchew (1898–1957), Eugène Berman (1899–1972), and Berman’s brother Léonid (1896–1976). Several of the artists, notably Bérard and Tchelitchew, enjoyed some fame in the years after, only to slip into near-oblivion later on. “Neo-Romantics: A Forgotten Moment in Modern Art 1926–1972,” a stimulating exhibition curated by the writer Patrick Mauriés and based on his recent book on the subject, published in 2022 by Flammarion and in English by Thames & Hudson, should spark new interest in them.¹