Henri Matisse
1869-1954

The French artist Henri Matisse, destined to follow his father into the family grain business, studied at St. Quentin college before going on to the University of Paris to study law. That destiny changed, however, when he started painting during a prolonged period of convalescence after an appendectomy.

He began studying art under Gustave Moreau and enrolled in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. The influences of French painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne, and also the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, were critical to the way in which Matisse began to use color to render forms and spatial planes. After his marriage, he travelled to London, where he saw the works of J.W. Turner. Matisse began experimenting with pointillism, after reading an essay by Paul Signac. In 1904, he spent the summer at Signac's house at St. Tropez, and the next year went to Collioure with Derain, who was a member of the Fauves. Matisse joined the Fauves, and established himself as their leader. He expressed himself through the use of pure color, reducing and flattening his shapes even further. Color became the main element of the painting. In 1907, Matisse met Picasso at the Paris studio of writer and critic Gertrude Stein, whose attention he had received as a result of his growing fame. He made many trips, to Italy in 1907, Russia in 1911 and Morocco in 1913. An important commission came from a Russian collector who requested mural panels illustrating dance and music. La Danse and La Musique were completed in 1911 and are now in The Hermitage. The images of dancers and human figures convey expressive form first, while anatomy takes a secondary role.

Much of Matisse's time from 1920 on was spent in the south of France, particularly Nice, where the beauty of the light and color enchanted him. Confined to a wheelchair from 1941, Matisse began experimenting with a new technique, his papiers decoupes ( paper cutouts). For these, he gathered together sheets of brilliantly painted papers and cut out shapes which he then rearranged. This technique formed the basis for his Jazz series, twenty lithographs published by the Teriade publishing company. These prints were accompanied by a text of poetry by the artist. " Instead of drawing the outline and filling in the color - the two elements capable of modifying each other - I draw directly with the color," Matisse said. Using this method he designed the decoration of the Chapel in Vence between 1947- 1951.
Matisse died in Nice on November 3, 1954.