Matisse Book

One of the great pioneering masters of twentieth-century art, Henri Matisse was an extremely versatile and productive artist. Although he was an outstanding sculptor and draftsman, he is most widely known and loved for his painting. And his paintings—vibrant, colorful, and diverse—are the focus of this book.

Matisse's intended career was the law. But in 1890, while recovering from an illness, he took up painting as a diversion, and, against his parents' wishes, never went back to the l aw. He came to Paris to pursue his art studies in the fall of 1891, at the age of twenty-two. When he died in 1954 at the age of eighty-five, he had created a body of work that has established him as one of the two foremost artists of the modern period, the other being Picasso.

The inventive genius of Matisse could not be confined within the limits of any one school of art. He studied the old masters; he explored expressionism and Post-Impressionism; he was a leader of the Fauves (literally "Wild Beasts"—so named because of their shockingly vivid use of color); he ventured into various modes of expressive abstraction. The opening years of the century were the years of struggle for Matisse, but by 1909 he was world famous. His renown and influence grew as he continued to produce, in addition to work in such other mediums as sculpture, a wide range of paintings. All of these—from delicate, intimate still lifes and portraits to monumental figure compositions—were marked by his delight in vivid, pure color, bold pattern, and striking ornament.

105 illustrations, 40 in full color, 128 pages, 8-7/8 x 12"