* HENRI MATISSE *BIOGRAPHY and PAINTINGS Matisse, Henri 1869 - 1954
France
Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France on December 31, 1869. The son of a middle-class family, Matisse studied and began to practice law. In 1890, however, while recovering slowly from an attack of appendicitis, he became intrigued by the practice of painting. In 1892, having given up his law career, Matisse went to Paris to study art formally. Matisse joined Gustave Moreau’s studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met Camoin, Manguin, Marquet and Jean Puy.
Matisse's first teachers were academically trained and relatively conservative; Matisse’s own early style was a conventional form of naturalism, and he made many reproductions after the old masters. Matisse also studied more contemporary art, especially that of the impressionists, and he began to experiment, earning a reputation as a rebellious member of his studio classes.
Matisse’s true artistic liberation, in terms of the use of color to render forms and organize spatial planes, came about first through the influence of the French painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings Matisse studied closely beginning about 1899. Then, in 1903 and 1904, Matisse encountered the pointillist painting of Henri Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. Cross and Signac were experimenting with juxtaposing small strokes (often dots or “points”) of pure pigment to create the strongest visual vibration of intense color. Matisse adopted their technique and modified it repeatedly, using broader strokes.
By 1905 Matisse had produced some of the boldest paintings ever created, including a striking painting of his wife,
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) (1905, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). The title refers to a broad stroke of brilliant green that defines Madame Matisse’s brow and nose. In the same year Matisse exhibited this and similar paintings along with paintings by his artist companions, including Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. Together, the group was dubbed les fauves (literally, “the wild beasts”) because of the extremes of emotionalism in which they seemed to have indulged, their use of vivid colors, and their distortion of shapes.
While Matisse was regarded as a leader of radicalism in the arts, Matisse was beginning to gain the approval of a number of influential critics and collectors, including the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein and her family. Among the many important commissions Matisse received was that of a Russian collector who requested mural panels illustrating dance and music (both completed in 1911; now in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).
Such broadly conceived themes ideally suited Matisse; they allowed him freedom of invention and play of form and expression. Matisse paintings of dancers, and of human figures in general, convey expressive form first and the particular details of anatomy only secondarily. Matisse extended this principle into other fields; his bronze sculptures, like his drawings and works in several graphic media, reveal the same expressive contours seen in his paintings.
Although intellectually sophisticated, Matisse always emphasized the importance of instinct and intuition in the production of a work of art. Matisse argued that an artist did not have complete control over color and form; instead, colors, shapes, and lines would come to dictate to the sensitive artist how they might be employed in relation to one another. Matisse often emphasized his joy in abandoning himself to the play of the forces of color and design, and he explained the rhythmic, but distorted, forms of many of his figures in terms of the working out of a total pictorial harmony.
From the 1920s until his death, Matisse spent much time in the south of France, particularly Nice, painting local scene paintings with a thin, fluid application of bright color. In his old age, Matisse was commissioned to design the decoration of the small Chapel of Saint-Marie du Rosaire at Vence (near Cannes), which he completed between 1947 and 1951. Often bedridden during his last years, Matisse occupied himself with decoupage, creating paintings of brilliantly colored paper cutouts arranged casually, but with an unfailing eye for design, on a canvas surface.
Matisse died in Nice on November 3, 1954. Unlike many artists, Matisse was internationally popular during his lifetime, enjoying the favor of collectors, art critics, and the younger generation of artists.
The Red Room,1908, Oil on canvas, 220x180 cm
Dance, 1912, Oil on canvas, 190x114 cm
Family Portrait, 1911, Oil on canvas, 194x143 cm
Fruits, 1901, Oil on canvas, 61x51 cm
Blue Still Life, 1901, Oil on canvas, 73x59 cm
Study for Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905, Watercolor on paper mounted on board, 25.4 x 32 cm
The Dance, 1910, Oil on canvas, 391x260 cm
Untitled
President Basescu's youngest daughter wants to become a deputy – A.I. – Ziua – read here -
PSD asks Italian politicians to oppose extremism and xenophobia – A.I. – Ziua – read here -
Romanian officials banned access to Chishinau – George Damian – Ziua – read here -
Romanian attacks German President – D.E. – Ziua – read here -
.jpg)
