|
|
| |
Henri Matisse
1869-1954
Henri Matisse was a French artist, noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draughtsmanship. As a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing is apparent in a body of work spanning over a half-century, and won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
Henri Matisse grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, France where his parents owned a seed business. He was working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. He first started painting in 1889, and discovered "a kind of paradise". In 1891 he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau and Moreau. He adopted the traditional Flemish style in still-lives and landscapes and was quite successful.
After he visited the painter John Peter Russell who 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." Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, he made colour a crucial element of his paintings. In 1898 he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner. His first solo exhibition was in 1904, without much success. The paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail.
At the 1905 Salon d'Automne, several artists exhibited paintings with wild, vivid colors and were soon called Fauves (wild beasts). Matisse was recognized as one of its leaders. Other members were Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck.
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. His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were amongst several of his most loyal students.
His work of the post-World War I period can be compared with the neoclassicism of Picasso and Stravinsky, and the return to traditionalism of Derain. His oriental odalisque paintings are characteristic of the period. After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appear in his work.
In 1941 he was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he started using a wheelchair. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of gouaches découpés technique which he called "painting with scissors". They demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity.
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 1954.
|
|
|
|
