Matisse

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was the great French painter of modern times. In the early years of the century he became the leader of a group of avant-garde artists called the Fauves (“wild beasts”), known for their use of brilliant, aggressive colors. His career spanned more than five decades and during that time he developed many other styles, from austere variations on Cubism to sensual interiors and figure paintings. Throughout his life, Matisse remained preoccupied by the subject of the female model; during the many years he spent on the Mediterranean coast he painted innumerable fantasies of women in exotic costumes. Late in life, in ill health and no longer able to sustain the exertion of painting, Matisse invented the technique of making pictures from pieces of colored paper cut out with scissors. He achieved in old age a final burst of creativity in his mural and stained glass designs for a chapel at Vence in the south of France, one of the most acclaimed ensembles of church decoration of the twentieth century. This book reproduces in color more than sixty of Matisse’s most remarkable paintings from all periods of his life, among them portraits, still lifes, and figures, as well as several of his paper cutouts and his designs for the chapel at Vence.