Henri Matisse 1869 - 1954
Matisse was born in 1869 in Northern France. By 1891 he had abandoned his law degree and started to paint. In Paris, Matisse studied art briefly at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He embraced a new range of influences, abandoning the Impressionistic palette and establishing his own style with brilliant colour and fluid line. His subjects were primarily women, interiors, and still lifes.
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From the early 1920s until 1939, Matisse divided his time between the South of France and Paris. While recuperating from two major operations in 1941 and 1942, he concentrated on a technique he had devised earlier, ‘papiers découpés’ (paper cutouts), which would prove hugely influential, and was one of the first painters to take an interest in “primitive” art. He died on November 3, 1954, in Nice.
Lithograph, 1954
From the suite The Last Works
Signed in Plate
Paper size: 26 × 36cm
£1250 Framed
Between 1950 and 1954 Matisse created some highly innovative, brightly coloured gouache paper cut-outs. Severe arthritis had made it difficult for him to paint. In 1953 it was decided to reinterpret these works as lithographs. Matisse personally directed and supervised the first 'pulls' during 1954, in collaboration with the renowned lithographers Mourlot Frères of Paris. These prints are original lithographs from the 1954 edition after Matisse’s cutouts.