Matisse

1. Matisse

2. Henry Matisse1 December 1869 – 3 November 1954 • Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draughtsmanship. • Matisse was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally a painter • Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. • Matisse was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), but by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. • Matisse worked very hard to create art “like a comfortable armchair” in which to relax. • Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, and grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois in Northeastern France, where his parents owned a seed business • Matisse initially studied law, but in 1889, after an attack of appendicitis, his mother brought him art supplies and he decided to become a painter • Matisse’s most admired painter was Chardin: as an art student he made copies of 4 his works • In 1897-1898 the painter John Peter Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me.“ • With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). Marguerite often served as a model for Matisse. • Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso and they became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. • Matisse’s subjects painted most frequently (as well as by Picasso) were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. • His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists (operated 1911-1917) • Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 1954.

3. Luxe, Calme et Volupté1905 Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris .

5. Fauvism

6. Henry MatisseFauvism • Les Fauves was a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational values retained by Impressionism. • While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions. • The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain • Matisse was influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art and made colour a crucial element • In 1905, Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne. • The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colors, without regard for the subject's natural colors. • Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room • The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such as "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" from the critic Camille Mauclair, but also some favorable attention • The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein: this had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work • The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917

7. Woman with a Hat1905 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

9. Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt1906 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

11. The Dance(2nd version)1910 Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

13. Open Window, Collioure1905 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

15. Portrait of Madame Matisse (The green line) 1905 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

17. Young Sailor 1906 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

19. The Dessert: Harmony in Red 1908 Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

21. Anemones and Chinese Vase 1922 Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA

23. Portrait of LydiaDelectorskaya1947 Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

24. After he and his wife separated in 1941, and until his death he would be cared for by a Russian woman, Lidia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models.

25. Painting with Scissors, Jazz • Jazz (1947) is a book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts • In 1941 he was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he started using a wheelchair. • Matisse was ~70, in poor health, could no longer draw or paint easily with a pencil or brush. • Matisse used scissors to cut out simple forms from brightly colored paper painted to his specifications with gouache, then arranged them on another sheet of gouache-painted paper. Assistants took these assemblages and prepared them for printing. • The themes in Jazz can be separated into four categories: the world of the French music hall and circus, mythology and legends, symbolism for the War between France and Germany, and memories from his life and travels. • Originally he wanted to illustrate poems, but just plain words seemed more powerful to him • Some of the pages have Matisse's text on the left side and an image on the right; other pages, like The Funeral of Pierrot, cover the entire sheet and there is no text. • The depiction of Icarus falling through a field of deep blue with yellow starbursts all around him can also be read as a visual metaphor for the resistance fighters' courageous attempts to navigate the skies between the Nazi artillery shelling. The victor/victim duality of war is symbolized in the complementary but opposing dangers expressed in self-inflicted danger in the case of the sword swallower to and victimization at the hands of another in the depiction of the knife thrower and assistant. • The name: In jazz music, a musician can take a simple, familiar, even conventional melody and with a few changes twist it into a barely recognizable tune. • Jazz is one of the most successful of the limited edition books published by 20th century artists, including those by Picasso, Chagall and Dufy. Some of the prints from Jazz have become classic images and have been reproduced countless times as posters. • Blue Nudes are a series of gouaches découpées executed in 1952. They represent female nudes either seated or standing, and are among Matisse's final works in any medium

26. Icarus 1947 Illustration for the book 'Jazz', screen-print after gouache on paper cut-out.

28. Knife Thrower 1947 from Jazz, print from paper collage

30. Sword Swallower 1947 from Jazz, print from paper collage

32. Large Red Interior1948 Musée Nazional d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

34. Creole Dancer 1950 Musée Matisse, Nice

36. Beasts of the Sea, 1950 Paper collage on canvas, collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

38. Blue Hair 1952 Gouache-painted paper cut-outs stuck to paper mounted on canvas; from Blue Nudes series

40. Bouquet 1953 UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

42. Kings Sadness 1952 Gouache on paper and canvas, Pompidou Centre, Paris