Henri Matisse

This title brings back to life the most important result of Matisse's cut-outs period: Jazz, the legendary suite of twenty colorful prints with calligraphic text. With this, readers can experience Jazz as if they were beholding the 1947 original. For the position as most important artist of the modern era, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was rivaled only by Picasso, who himself once said, 'All things considered, there is only Matisse'. After a truly monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, Matisse was struck down by illness and no longer able to stand upright and use a paintbrush. At this late stage in his life - he was nearly 80 - he developed a technique of drawing shapes on brightly colored paper, which he then cut out; these were called gouaches decoupes (gouache cut-outs) and came to represent a revolution in modern art. Many critics at the time dismissed this work as the folly of a senile old man, but today it is common sense that by using scissors to carve shapes out of paper, Matisse found a brilliant solution to the age-old conflict between drawing and color.Printed using the same paper and inks - in up to 16 colors - as for the original 1947 edition, this volume allows readers to experience Jazz as if they were beholding the original. To put the work in context, the complete story of Matisse's cut-outs is traced from its first origins during the artist's trip to Tahiti in 1930 through the late works during his final years in Nice. Also included are other pivotal works from his later career, including Matisse's contributions to Verve magazine and his decoration of the Vence Chapel. The gorgeous reproductions of Matisse's work are accompanied by rare photographs taken by Matisse in Tahiti as well as photos of Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and the filmmaker Murnau. Gilles Neret's text is supplemented by quotations from Matisse, Picasso, Teriade (the publisher of "Jazz and Verve"), poets such as Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse's son-in-law, Georges Duthuit, as well as collectors such as Heinz and Oliver Berggruen.