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MATISSE Henri
MATISSE (1869 - 1954)
Henri Matisse was born in Cateau-Cambresis, France. He studied at university level for one year, winding up in the legal research department. He stumbled on painting while convalescing and entered the School of Fine Arts (Bouguereau studio) before moving on to the Gustave Moreau studio where he met Marquet, Rouault, Camoin and Manguin. In 1898 he met Derain.
In 1905, at the Salon de l’Automn, Fauvism was born. Matisse, who would front the movement, stood out thanks to his instinctive confidence in radiant colors. This was an art form, as far as he was concerned, that was both fashionable and sophisticated, but mainly characterized by his invention of wide-open fields of color. Matisse turned portraits into landscapes; after a Pointillist period (a myriad of little dabs of color applied to canvas), all of the hues would vibrate in a sort of chromatic dream.
The genius lies in the disposition of a painting’s elements, the true art being the perfect arrangement of the ensemble, the decoration, while excluding the superfluous. The exhibition of his 100th anniversary in New York will be greeted by the American critics as “the most beautiful exhibition in the world”! Every Matisse show brings in the crowds, and visitors know today the privileged place Matisse occupies in the history of 20th century art. This is partly due to the absolute power he breathed into the colors that danced on his canvas. Matisse is a legend and every one of his exhibitions is a huge success.
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Henri-Emile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau–Cambrésis, France. He grew up at Bohain-en-Vermandois and studied law in Paris from 1887 to 1888. By 1891, he had abandoned law and started to paint. In Paris, Matisse studied art briefly at the Académie Julian and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with Gustave Moreau.
In 1901, Matisse exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris and met another future leader of the Fauve movement, Maurice de Vlaminck. His first solo show took place at the Galerie Vollard in 1904. Both Leo and Gertrude Stein, as well as Etta and Claribel Cone, began to collect Matisse’s work at that time. Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He was one of the first painters to take an interest in “primitive” art. Matisse abandoned the palette of the Impressionists and established his characteristic style, with its flat, brilliant color and fluid line. His subjects were primarily women, interiors, and still lifes. In 1913, his work was included in the Armory Show in New York. By 1923, two Russians, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morosov, had purchased nearly 50 of his paintings.
From the early 1920s until 1939, Matisse divided his time primarily between the South of France and Paris. During this period, he worked on paintings, sculptures, lithographs, and etchings, as well as on murals for the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania, designs for tapestries, and set and costume designs for Léonide Massine’s ballet Rouge et noir. While recuperating from two major operations in 1941 and 1942, Matisse concentrated on a technique he had devised earlier: papiers découpés (paper cutouts). Jazz, written and illustrated by Matisse, was published in 1947; the plates are stencil reproductions of paper cutouts. In 1948, he began the design for the decoration of Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence, which was completed and consecrated in 1951. The same year, a major retrospective of his work was presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and then traveled to Cleveland, Chicago, and San Francisco. In 1952, the Musée Matisse was inaugurated at the artist’s birthplace of Le Cateau–Cambrésis. Matisse continued to make large paper cutouts, the last of which was a design for the rose window at Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York. He died on November 3, 1954, in Nice.
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