Waddington Custot Opens New Paris Gallery With “The Nabi Shock,” Pairing Nabis Masters With Contemporary Echoes
On Rue de Seine, where galleries have long traded in the productive friction between past and present, Waddington Custot is planting a new flag. The London-based dealer is inaugurating its first Paris location in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with “The Nabi Shock,” a sweeping group exhibition that traces the afterlife of the Nabis — the late-19th-century circle whose flattened forms and saturated palettes helped reroute modern painting.
On view from April 9–June 6, 2026, the exhibition brings together works by key Nabi figures including Émile Bernard, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, and Maurice Denis. Among the historical highlights is Denis’s “Le Cheval blanc (projet de vitrail)” (1894), a design for stained glass that underscores the group’s interest in decorative arts and the idea of the image as an integrated surface rather than a window onto illusionistic space.
The show’s premise is not simply historical. “The Nabi Shock” also stages a cross-generational conversation by placing contemporary works alongside the 1890s material, suggesting that the Nabis’ lessons — about color as structure, rhythm as a compositional engine, and the painting as an internal logic — remain available to artists now. Contemporary participants include Fabienne Verdier, Pierre Knop, and Christine Safa. Verdier is represented by “Sur les routes de la mer” (2025), a recent work that extends the exhibition’s emphasis on movement and chromatic force.
For Waddington Custot, the Paris opening marks a new chapter in a program that has long moved between modern and contemporary art. The gallery has maintained a prominent presence in London for decades and expanded to Dubai in 2016, a step that broadened its collector base and geographic reach. The new Paris space, the gallery has indicated, is intended as a reaffirmation of its commitment to the French art scene — both historic and current.
“We are proud to open our first Parisian space in the vibrant artistic hub of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” said gallery cofounder Stéphane Custot, framing the move as a contribution to the “renewal of Rue de Seine,” a street he described as a place where “artistic forms and eras have always been in dialogue.” He added that the gallery’s “manifesto” is to unite “leading figures of Modern art with major contemporary creators,” a logic made explicit in the inaugural hang.
Custot also pointed to a broader institutional moment for the Nabis, noting that the movement is receiving renewed attention through large-scale exhibitions, including presentations at the National Library of France and La Pedrera in Barcelona. In that context, “The Nabi Shock” reads as both a market-facing statement and a curatorial one: a reminder that the Nabis were not a footnote to Post-Impressionism, but a catalyst whose visual strategies continue to reverberate.
“The Nabi Shock” is on view at Waddington Custot, Paris, April 9–June 6, 2026.
