BIOGRAPHY AND PERSONALITY OF A FAMOUS CAPRICORN: HENRI MATISSE

(born Dec. 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, Fr.—died Nov. 2, 1954, Nice) French painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. He was a law clerk when he became interested in art. After study with Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts, he exhibited four paintings at the Salon and scored a triumph when the government bought his Woman Reading (1895). Self-confident and venturesome, he experimented with pointillism but eventually abandoned it in favour of the swirls of spontaneous brushwork and riots of colour that became known as Fauvism. Though his subjects were largely domestic and figurative, his works exhibit a distinctive Mediterranean verve. He also took up sculpture and would produce some 60 pieces during his lifetime. The Armory Show exhibited 13 of his paintings. In 1917 he moved to the French Riviera, where his paintings became less daring but his output remained prodigious. After 1939 he became increasingly active as a graphic artist and in 1947 published Jazz, a book of reflections on art and life with brilliantly coloured illustrations made by “drawing with scissors”: the motifs were pasted together after being cut out of sheets of coloured paper. He was ill during most of his last 13 years; he designed the magnificent Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence (1948–51) as a gift to the Dominican nuns who cared for him. His well-known paintings include Joy of Life (1906), The Red Studio (1915), Piano Lesson (1916), and The Dance I and The Dance II (1931–33).

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