Matisse

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was a fighting spirit. Despite cancer diagnosed in 1941, progressive weakness, and confinement to a wheelchair, the indomitable Frenchman He never stopped doing artistic research . In what he called a second life, a second way, he embarked on an extraordinary “collage period” cutting and gluing pieces of colored paper to create gouaches découpées Of birds, plants, flowers and female forms .

By placing emphasis on color and contrast, the cutout technique generated singular lines and vivid juxtapositions . In works such as The Fall of Icarus (1943), Blue Nude (1952), The snail (1953) and The bundle (1953), clear shapes and elementary structures they fuel a compositional force that conceals the decorative charm of the work, which is at the same time rigorously structured and pervaded by a contagious joy of life . As the work progressed, Matisse's enthusiasm for the results obtained pushed him to create ever larger works, moving from small specimens to huge wall-sized murals .

As he approached the end of his life, the artist increasingly enjoyed the luminous simplicity of these works, admitting: “Only what I created after the illness represents what I truly am: free, liberated…”. In this indispensable introductory volume we revisit the joyful final chapter of Matisse's long and prodigious career, analyzing how the artist's entire journey is contained in the clippings thanks to the exploration of the possibilities they offer on a formal, chromatic and compositional level .