On February 5, 1919, shortly after the First World War, Denis and George Desvallières founded the "Ateliers d'Art Sacré", or workshops of Sacred art. (1914–18) as part of a broad movement in Europe to reconcile the church with modern civilization. The "Ateliers" created art for churches, particularly those devastated by the recent war. Denis said that he was against academic art because it sacrificed emotion to convention and artifice, and was against realism because it was prose and he wanted music. Above all he wanted beauty, which was an attribute of divinity.