What Style of Art Was Henri Matisse Known for

"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject-affair, an fine art which could exist for every mental worker, for the businessman too as the man of letters, for case, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a adept armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue."

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"Exactitude is not truth."

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"Do you detect perfect correspondence betwixt the nature of the drawing and the nature of the painting? In my opinion, they seem totally different from each other, absolutely contradictory. One, the drawing, depends on linear or sculptural plasticity, and the other, the painting, depends on colored plasticity."

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"What interests me near is neither still life or mural, but the human figure. It is that which best permits me to limited my so-to-speak religious awe towards life."

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"That newspaper cutting-out, the kind of volute acanthus that you see on the wall upward there, is a stylized snail. Get-go of all, I drew the snail from nature, holding it between two fingers; drew and drew. I became aware of an unfolding. I formed in my heed a purified sign for a shell. Then I took the pair of scissors."

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"An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which volition afterwards enable him to express himself in his own linguistic communication."

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Summary of Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse is widely regarded every bit the greatest colorist of the twenty^th century and every bit a rival to Pablo Picasso in the importance of his innovations. He emerged every bit a Post-Impressionist, and first achieved prominence equally the leader of the French movement Fauvism. Although interested in Cubism, he rejected information technology, and instead sought to use color as the foundation for expressive, decorative, and often awe-inspiring paintings. As he once controversially wrote, he sought to create an art that would be "a soothing, calming influence on the listen, rather like a expert armchair." Nonetheless life and the nude remained favorite subjects throughout his career; North Africa was as well an important inspiration, and, towards the end of his life, he made an important contribution to collage with a series of works using cut-out shapes of color. He is too highly regarded as a sculptor.

Accomplishments

• Matisse used pure colors and the white of exposed canvas to create a light-filled temper in his Fauve paintings. Rather than using modeling or shading to lend book and structure to his pictures, Matisse used contrasting areas of pure, unmodulated color. These ideas continued to be important to him throughout his career.
• His art was of import in endorsing the value of decoration in modern art. However, although he is popularly regarded as a painter devoted to pleasance and contentment, his use of color and pattern is often deliberately disorientating and unsettling.
• Matisse was heavily influenced by art from other cultures. Having seen several exhibitions of Asian art, and having traveled to Due north Africa, he incorporated some of the decorative qualities of Islamic art, the angularity of African sculpture, and the flatness of Japanese prints into his own style.
• Matisse once declared that he wanted his art to be i "of balance, of purity and tranquility devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter," and this aspiration was an important influence on some, such as Clement Greenberg, who looked to fine art to provide shelter from the disorientation of the modernistic world.
• The homo figure was central to Matisse's work both in sculpture and painting. Its importance for his Fauvist work reflects his feeling that the subject had been neglected in Impressionism, and it continued to be of import to him. At times he fragmented the figure harshly, at other times he treated it nearly as a curvilinear, decorative element. Some of his work reflects the mood and personality of his models, but more often he used them merely every bit vehicles for his own feelings, reducing them to ciphers in his monumental designs.

Biography of Henri Matisse

Matisse meticulously experimented with art, trying and retrying ideas saying: "I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a calorie-free joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me."

Of import Art past Henri Matisse

Progression of Art

1904-05

Luxe, Calme, et Volupte

The title of this painting is taken from the refrain of Charles Baudelaire'southward verse form, Invitation to a Voyage (1857), in which a human being invites his lover to travel with him to paradise. The landscape is likely based on the view from Paul Signac'due south firm in Saint-Tropez, where Matisse was vacationing. Most of the women are nude (in the style of a traditional classical idyll), but ane woman - thought to represent the painter'due south married woman - wears contemporary wearing apparel. This is Matisse'due south but major painting in the Neo-Impressionist mode, and its technique was inspired by the Pointillism of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. He differs from the approach of those painters, however, in the way in which he outlines figures to give them emphasis.

Oil on canvas - Musée National d'Fine art Moderne, Paris

1905

The Woman with a Chapeau

Matisse attacked conventional portraiture with this prototype of his wife. Amelie'southward pose and dress are typical for the day, simply Matisse roughly practical bright color across her face, hat, dress, and even the background. This shocked his contemporaries when he sent the movie to the 1905 Salon d'Automne. Leo Stein chosen it, "the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen," nonetheless he and Gertrude bought it for the importance they knew it would have to modern painting.

Oil on sheet - The San Francisco Museum of Mod Art

1905-06

Joy of Life (Le Bonheur de Vivre)

During his Fauve years Matisse often painted landscapes in the s of France during the summer and worked up ideas developed there into larger compositions upon his return to Paris. Joy of Alive, the 2d of his of import imaginary compositions, is typical of these. He used a landscape he had painted in Collioure to provide the setting for the idyll, but it is also influenced by ideas drawn from Watteau, Poussin, Japanese woodcuts, Western farsi miniatures, and xix^th-century Orientalist images of harems. The scene is made upwardly of independent motifs bundled to form a complete limerick. The massive painting and its shocking colors received mixed reviews at the Salon des Indépendants. Critics noted its new style -- broad fields of color and linear figures, a clear rejection of Paul Signac's celebrated Pointillism.

Oil on canvas - The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

1907

Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)

Matisse was working on a sculpture, Reclining Nude I, when he accidentally damaged the piece. Before repairing it, he painted it in blue confronting a groundwork of palm fronds. The nude is hard and angular, both a tribute to Cézanne and to the sculpture Matisse saw in Algeria. She is also a deliberate response to nudes seen in the Paris Salon - ugly and hard rather than soft and pretty. This was the final Matisse painting bought by Leo and Gertrude Stein.

Oil on canvas - The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection

1908-09

The Back I

Although Matisse is known above all equally a painter, sculpture was besides important to him, and he was peculiarly inspired past Auguste Rodin, whom he visited in his studio in 1900. The Dorsum I is the start of a series of four large relief sculptures that Matisse worked on betwixt 1909 and 1931, all of which are significantly innovative. Conventionally, the background of a relief sculpture is regarded as a virtual airplane, a kind of imaginary infinite that the viewer fills in with his own notions. But in The Back series, Matisse suggested that the properties was fashioned from the aforementioned heavy textile as the figure itself. Throughout the series, the figure is progressively simplified and further identified with the background. The motif was possibly get-go inspired past a figure in a painting by Cézanne that Matisse endemic.

Bronze - The Museum of Modern Fine art, New York

1915-16

The Moroccans

Matisse planned this picture as early as 1913, and it recalls visits made to Morocco around this time. A figure sits on the right with a back to united states, fruit lies in the left foreground, and a mosque rises in the background across a terrace. Matisse said that he occasionally used black in his pictures in club to simplify the composition, though here it undoubtedly too recalls the stark shadows produced by the strong sunshine in the region. Like Bathers by a River (1917), The Moroccans was significantly influenced by Picasso'due south Cubism, and some have even compared information technology to Picasso's Iii Musicians (1921). Although it employs the same brilliant colour equally much of Matisse's piece of work, its use of abstruse motifs and rigid diagrammatic composition is unusual, and has attracted considerable speculation. Rather than use the scene as an opportunity for decoration, it is as if Matisse has tried to find the ways to nautical chart and map information technology.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Mod Fine art, New York

1917

Bathers by a River

Matisse regarded this picture every bit i of the most of import in his career, and it is certainly one of his virtually puzzling. He worked on it at intervals over eight years, and it passed through a variety of transformations. The painting evolved out of a commission from Matisse's Russian patron, Sergei Shchuckin, for ii decorative panels on the subjects of dance and music, and, initially, the scheme for the picture resembled the idyllic scenes he had previously depicted in paintings such as Joy of Life (1905-06). However, his transformations gradually turned information technology into more of a confrontation with Cubism, and it is for this reason that the picture has been the field of study of intense scrutiny. Although Matisse rejected Cubism, he certainly felt challenged by it, and this film - along with many he painted from 1913 to 1917 - seems to be influenced by the style, since it is very unlike his previous, more decorative work. Information technology is far more concerned with faithful representation of the structure of the human figure, and its position in space. The painting might be compared to The Backs series (1909-31), which also preoccupied Matisse the years he was working on Bathers, since both accost the problem of depicting a three-dimensional effigy against a apartment background.

Oil on canvas - The Art Constitute of Chicago

1932

The Dance 2

Albert Barnes, a doctor and art lover, commissioned Matisse in 1931 to paint a mural for the main hall of his gallery housing works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and others. Matisse created a maquette for the mural out of cut paper, which he could rearrange as he adamant the limerick. However, the finished piece of work was besides small for the space due to being given incorrect measurements. Rather than add a decorative border, Matisse decided to recompose the unabridged slice, resulting in a dynamic composition, in which bodies seem to bound across bathetic space of pink and blue fields.

Oil on canvass - Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

1952

Blue Nude II

Matisse completed a series of four bluish nudes in 1952, each in his favorite pose of entwined legs and raised arm. Matisse had been making cut-outs for xi years, but had non yet seriously attempted to portray the human effigy. In preparation for these works, Matisse filled a notebook with studies. He then created a figure that is abstracted and simplified, a symbol for the nude, before incorporating the nude into his big-scale murals.

Gouache-painted paper cutting-outs - Individual Collection

Similar Art

Influences and Connections

Influences on Creative person

Influenced by Creative person

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  Henri Bergson

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  Albert Marquet

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  Leo Stein

Useful Resources on Henri Matisse

Books

video clips

articles

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Books

The books and manufactures below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These too propose some accessible resources for further enquiry, peculiarly ones that can be establish and purchased via the cyberspace.

biography

• The Unknown Matisse Our Pick

  By Hilary Spurling

• Matisse the Chief: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954

  Past Hilary Spurling

• Matisse And Picasso: The Story Of Their Rivalry And Friendship

  By Jack Flam

• Matisse in the Studio

  By Ellen McBreen and Helen Burnham

• In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art Our Choice

  By Sue Roe

• Henri Matisse (Disquisitional Lives)

  By Kathryn Dark-brown

written by creative person

• Matisse'south "Notes of a Painter": Criticism, Theory, and Context, 1891-1908 Our Pick

  By Roger Benjamin

• Jazz

  Past Henri Matisse, Riva Castleman

• Matisse on Art

  Past Henri Matisse, Jack Flam

• Matisse: The Books Our Pick

  Past Louise Rogers Lalaurie

artworks

• Henri Matisse: A Retrospective Our Pick

  By John Elderfield

• Matisse: A Retrospective

  By Jack Flam

• Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs Our Pick

  By Karl Buchberg, Nicholas Cullinan, and Jodi Hauptman

• Matisse in the Barnes Foundation: 3 Vol. Set Our Pick

  By Yve Alain-Bois

• Matisse Our Choice

  Past Volkmar Essers

• Matisse and Decoration

  Past John Klein

• Matisse: From Color to Architecture Our Option

  By Rene Percheron and Christian Brouder

• Matisse: Printmaker

  By Jean Fisher

• Matisse: His Fine art and His Public

  By Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr.

• Matisse: In Search of True Painting Our Choice

  By Rebecca Rabinow and Dorthe Aagesen

• Matisse Our Pick

  Past Pierre Schneider

• Inside Matisse: Understanding Henri Matisse

  Past Spatio Temprey

Content compiled and written by Julia Brucker, Alexandra Duncan

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

"Henri Matisse Artist Overview and Analysis". [Cyberspace]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Julia Brucker, Alexandra Duncan
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
Starting time published on 21 Oct 2011. Updated and modified regularly
[Accessed ]

pikegrou1939.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/matisse-henri/

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