Henri Matisse continued creating highly original works well into his eighties. For his cut-outs he used paper hand-painted with gouache, laid down in abstract or figurative patterns: “the paper cut-out allows me to draw in the colour … Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it…I draw straight into the colour”. The colours he used were so strong that he was advised by his doctor to wear dark glasses.
The lithographic reproductions in this exhibition are taken from a special double issue of Verve, a review of art and literature published by Tériade, a major publisher of fine art books in 1958.
Matisse began his working life as a lawyer, before going to Paris to study art in 1890. At first strongly influenced by the Impressionists, he soon created his own style using brilliant, pure colours, and started making sculptures as well as paintings. In 1905 he and his colleagues were branded the ‘Fauves’ (wild beasts) because of their unconventional use of colour, and it was during this time that Matisse painted his celebrated Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Luxury, Tranquillity and Delight) (1904).
“There is no gap between my earlier pictures and my cut-outs” Matisse wrote, “I have only reached a form reduced to the essential through greater absoluteness and greater abstraction”
‘Matisse: Drawing with Scissors’ is a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition from South Bank Centre, London on behalf of Arts Council England.