Henri Matisse

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Henri Matisse in May 1933, photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Matisse's signature

Henri Matisse [ ɑ̃ʁi matis ], full name: Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (born December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis , Département Nord , France ; † November 3, 1954 in Cimiez , now a district of Nice ), was a French painter , Graphic artist , draftsman and sculptor .

Together with Pablo Picasso, he is one of the most important artists of Classical Modernism . Alongside André Derain , he is considered a pioneer and main representative of Fauvism , which propagated the separation from Impressionism and represented the first artistic movement of the 20th century.

Matisse's work is carried by a two-dimensional color scheme and tense lines. In his paintings, the coloring, the playful composition and the lightness of his subjects are the result of long studies.

With its incurred in the 1940s silhouettes (gouache cut-outs) - an example is the artist's book Jazz - created Matisse, who was seriously ill, a late work, bringing forth the reduction efforts to a conclusion and with its color and ornamentation of his career is the highlight. The Rosary Chapel in Vence , which he planned and equipped and inaugurated in 1951, was considered by the artist to be his masterpiece.

His stylistic innovations influenced modern art . The abstract expressionists in the USA repeatedly referred to his work.

Life

Childhood and Education (1869–1898)

The family home in Bohain-en-Vermandois in 2013

Henri Matisse, son of Émile Matisse and his wife Héloïse, née Gérard, was born on the farm of his grandparents in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. His parents ran a drugstore and a seed shop in Bohain-en-Vermandois; that's where Matisse grew up. In 1872 his brother Émile Auguste was born. The father wanted his eldest son to take over the family business. However, after attending the humanistic Henri-Martin-Gymnasium in Saint-Quentin from 1882 to 1887, Henri decided to study law in Paris , which he completed for two years.

During a brief activity as a paralegal in Saint-Quentin in 1889, Matisse took drawing classes at the École Quentin de la Cour in the morning hours. In 1890 he began painting after an appendix operation, the consequences of which kept him bedridden for a year. He gave up his legal career in 1891, returned to Paris and entered the Académie Julian , where, among others, the salon painter William Adolphe Bouguereau taught. Matisse wanted to prepare for the entrance exam at the École des Beaux-Arts . However, he did not pass it.

Matisse also attended the École des Arts décoratifs (School of Applied Arts), where he met Albert Marquet , with whom he had a long friendship. In 1895, after passing the entrance exam to the École des Beaux-Arts, they both became students of the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau , in whose class they had already been accepted as visiting students in 1893. Matisse had a daughter, Marguerite († 1982), in 1894, the mother was Camille (Caroline) Joblaud, a woman he employed as a model and who was his lover.

During a stay in Brittany in 1896, Matisse got to know the Impressionist color palette through his travel companion, the painter Émile Auguste Wéry (1868-1935), who was his Parisian neighbor from Quai Saint-Michel 19 . During this time he began to copy classical works in the Louvre and exhibited five paintings for the first time in the salon of the Société nationale des beaux-arts . In 1897 and 1898 he visited the painter John Peter Russell on Belle-Île , an island off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to the Impressionist style of painting and introduced him to the work of Vincent van Gogh . Matisse's painting style changed fundamentally, and later he stated: "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained the theory of color to me ".

Marriage (1898)

Henri Matisse and Amélie Matisse-Parayre, 1898

On January 10, 1898, Henri Matisse married Amélie Noellie Parayre. On the advice of Camille Pissarro , he then traveled to London to study Turner's work . At the same time he spent the honeymoon there with Amélie, which the couple, having returned shortly to Paris, continued from February 9 in Ajaccio on Corsica . The marriage resulted in two sons, Jean Gérard (1899–1976) and Pierre (1900–1989).

Paul Cézanne: Les trois baigneuses (The three bathers) , 1879–82

Marguerite was taken into the family; Matisse was very fond of his daughter and often portrayed her. She later married the art critic and philosopher Georges Duthuit; shortly before her death, she and her son Claude Duthuit published the catalog raisonné of her father's prints.

When Matisse's teacher Gustave Moreau died, he left the École des Beaux-Arts in 1899 because of differences with Moreau's successor, Fernand Cormon . After another brief study at the Académie Julian , he took courses with Eugène Carrière , who was a friend of the sculptor Auguste Rodin . It was here that Matisse met his future companions André Derain and his friend Maurice de Vlaminck . He painted with Albert Marquet in the Jardin du Luxembourg and attended sculpture courses in the evenings . In the same year he bought the painting The Three Bathers by Paul Cézanne from Vollard . Despite serious financial worries, he kept the work, which had a far-reaching influence on his thinking and creativity, until 1936. In that year he gave the painting as a gift to the Museum of Fine Arts in the Petit Palais in Paris.

Crisis years (1900–1905)

Grand Palais, Paris, Photochrom , around 1900

At the Académie Rodin, Matisse attended evening classes in 1900 and worked under the direction of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle with little success at first. Due to a lack of income - his wife's milliner business did not generate enough income to support himself and the children often had to be left to grandparents - he got into a serious financial crisis and took a job as a decorative painter. Together with Albert Marquet, Matisse painted garlands and frame decorations for the decoration of the 1900 World's Fair , which took place in the Grand Palais in Paris . The work was exhausting, so he returned to Bohain exhausted to recover. In those days, Matisse was so discouraged that he thought of giving up painting.

After Matisse had overcome his crisis, he sought art collectors and exhibition opportunities. In February 1902 he took part in a group exhibition at the newly founded B. Weill Gallery. In April and June of that year, Berthe Weill was the first gallery owner to sell his works. A first solo exhibition of his work took place in 1904 at the French art dealer Ambroise Vollard . In the summer of the same year, Matisse traveled to Saint-Tropez at the instigation of Paul Signac and began to paint pictures in the style of Neo-Impressionism .

Origin of Fauvism (1905)

Collioure, photo from 2006

Matisse spent the summer of 1905 with André Derain and at times with Maurice de Vlaminck in Collioure , a fishing village on the Mediterranean. This stay was a significant turning point in his work. During this time, in collaboration with Derain, a style emerged that went down in art history under the name Fauvism . The movement got its name when the small group of like-minded painters, consisting of Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, showed their pictures for the first time in an exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in the autumn of 1905 and earned outrage from the public and art critics .

Exhibition of the Salon d'Automne in Paris, 1905. The sculpture in the middle by Albert Marque provoked Vauxcelles' remark “Donatello chez les fauves”.

The critic Louis Vauxcelles called the artists "Fauves" ("The Wild Animals"). His commentary " Donatello chez les fauves" was published in the Gil Blas magazine on October 17, 1905 and became part of common parlance. The focus of criticism was the brightly colored painting Femme au chapeau ( Woman with a Hat ) by Matisse. Leo Stein , a brother of Gertrude Stein , bought the picture for 500 francs. This “scandalous success” drove Matisse's market value up. The Steins would also be among his sponsors in the future. The group of Fauvists disbanded in 1907.

Today the Chemin du Fauvisme in Collioure is a reminder of the origin of Fauvism there: reproductions of the paintings by Matisse and Derain made there are attached to a circular path in 19 places around the town.

Acquaintance with Picasso (1906)

On March 20, 1906 Matisse exhibited in the Salon des Independants its new plant vitality ( Le bonheur de vivre ) . Critics and academic painters were irritable; Paul Signac , Vice President of the Indépendants , joined the criticism and resented Matisse's rejection of post-impressionism, which the painting made clear . However, Leo Stein felt it was "the most important picture of our time" and acquired it for the salon run together with his sister Gertrude.

In the same year Matisse met Pablo Picasso ; Their first meeting took place in the Salon der Steins, where Matisse had been visiting regularly for a year. Since then he has had a friendship with Picasso based on creative rivalry and mutual respect. Gertrude Stein's American friends from Baltimore , Clarabel and Etta Cone , also became patrons and collectors of Matisse and Picasso. The Cone Collection is currently on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art .

Trip to Algeria (1906)

In May 1906 Matisse traveled to Algeria and visited the Biskra oasis . He did not paint during the trip; Only after returning home did the painting Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra) come into being, and after completing the painting, a sculpture Reclining Nude I (Aurora) , which shows a similar posture. From the two-week trip he brought back objects such as ceramics and fabrics, which he often used as motifs for his pictures. Matisse took the pure, two-dimensionally applied paint, the reduction of the drawing to an arabesque-like line and the two-dimensional arrangement of the pictorial space from the oriental ceramics . Oriental carpets appeared in his paintings like no other modern painter. One example is the still life Oriental Carpets , which he painted on his return.

The Académie Matisse (1908–1911)

Matisse and his students in the studio, 1909

At the instigation and with the support of his admirers, Michael, Sarah, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as Hans Purrmann , Marg and Oskar Moll and others, he founded a private painting school that got his name: "Académie Matisse". There he taught from January 1908 to 1911 and eventually had 100 students from home and abroad. Purrmann was responsible for organization and administration.

Classes initially took place in the Couvent des Oiseaux on Rue de Sèvres. In this vacant monastery, Matisse had already rented another studio space in addition to his original studio on Quai St.-Michel since 1905. After the founding of the private academy had been decided, Stein rented another room in the Couvent for teaching. However, the monastery complex had to be cleared after a few weeks. The school therefore moved to the Couvent de Sacré-Cœur on the Boulevard des Invalides at the corner of the Rue de Babylon.

Olga Markowa Meerson : Portrait Henri Matisse , 1911

Due to its non-commercial character, the Académie Matisse stood out from comparable master studios. Matisse attached great importance to basic classical training for young artists. Once a week a joint museum visit was on the curriculum. Working from a model came after the trouble of copying. At the time, the proportion of women among the student body was surprisingly high. Among the 18 German students, for example Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann , Franz Nölken and Walter Alfred Rosam , there were eight artists, including Mathilde Vollmoeller and Gretchen Wohlwill . Russian-born Olga Markowa Meerson , formerly a fellow student of Wassily Kandinsky in Munich, was one of his students.

In 1908 Matisse made his first trip to Germany with Hans Purrmann. There he got to know the artist group Brücke . He was asked to join the group as the “father of their rebellion” - in vain. In the same year his first American exhibition took place in Alfred Stieglitz ' Galerie 291 . His art theoretical work Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) appeared on December 25, 1908 in the Grande Revue .

Move to Issy-les-Moulineaux (1909)

Henri Matisse in Paris, August 1913. Photo by Carl Van Vechten

The Russian patron Sergei Schchukin became aware of Matisse's work and commissioned him to create two large paintings: The Dance and The Music . The crisis years were over, and his financially stable position enabled Matisse to leave his residence on Quai Saint-Michel in Paris in 1909 and move to Issy-les-Moulineaux , where he bought a house and had his studio built on the property. For a long time the family members stood as models for him free of charge and met his wishes with understanding. They were based on the artist's needs, for example the children had to be silent while eating so as not to disturb the father's concentration.

Exhibition poster for the Armory Show , New York 1913

After participating in the 1910 Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition in London put together by Roger Fry , Matisse's sculptures were first exhibited in Alfred Stieglitz 's Gallery 291 in New York in 1912 . A year later, in 1913, some of his paintings were shown in the major Armory Show , New York, which received harsh criticism from conservative American audiences. The Treasurer of the Armory Show, Walter Pach , represented Matisse's work in the United States from 1914 to 1926.

By 1912, some of Matisse's compositions were viewed by many critics as paracubist. Matisse and Picasso often exchanged ideas during those years. Matisse said: “We gave each other a lot at these encounters.” In those conversations Picasso played the advocatus diaboli , who constantly wanted to question something about Matisse's painting that in fact preoccupied him.

In addition to his stays in Seville (1910/1911) and Tangier (1911/1912 and 1912/1913), as well as a trip to Moscow (1911), Matisse stayed in Berlin in the summer of 1914 .

War years (1914-1918)

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Matisse was in Paris. He volunteered for military service, but his request was denied. After the family's homestead was destroyed in a German attack, Matisse received no more news from his mother and from his brother, who, like the other men in the village, had been taken away as a prisoner of war by the German military. Shortly before the Battle of the Marne , he left Paris and drove to Collioure with Marquet . The horrors of that time brought Fauvists and Cubists , who had previously been at odds due to artistic conflicts, closer together again, for example Juan Gris lived with the teacher of the children of Matisse. Its cubist influence reinforced Matisse's tendency towards geometric simplification. The sons Jean and Pierre had to do military service from the summer of 1917.

In Nice (1916–1954)

Matisse with Léonide Massine rehearsing Le Chant du Rossignol
Former residence of Matisse in Nice, No. 1, Place Charles-Félix (center)

Matisse stayed in Menton on the Côte d'Azur in 1916 on the advice of a doctor , as he suffered from bronchitis , and rented a room in the Hôtel Beau-Rivage in Nice in 1916/1917 . This city was to become his domicile for the years to come. After living in the Hôtel Méditerranée for a while, he moved into a two-story apartment on Place Charles-Félix in Nice in the 1920s. From May to September he returned regularly to Issy-les-Moulineaux and worked there in his studio.

In 1918 the Guillaume Gallery hosted the Matisse - Picasso exhibition, which to some extent was evidence of the leading role these painters played in contemporary art. Matisse showed some of his pictures to Renoir , whom he often visited during this time; he also associated with Bonnard in Antibes .

In 1920 Djagilev's ballet Le Chant du Rossignol premiered in Paris, for which Matisse had designed the costumes and set. He returned to working on sculptures that he had neglected in previous years. In 1927 his son Pierre Matisse , who had become a gallery owner, organized an exhibition for him in his New York gallery; in the same year he received the prize for painting at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh .

To relax, Matisse made many trips, for example to Étretat in 1921 , to Italy in 1925 and in 1930 to Tahiti via New York and San Francisco .

Divorce - order for the mural dance (1930)

On his return trip in September 1930, he visited his important collector Albert C. Barnes in Merion (USA), who asked him for a mural on the subject of dance for his private museum . Works by Georges Seurat , Cézanne , Auguste Renoir already filled the walls there. Matisse accepted the challenge and was able to finish the work in 1932. In 1933 his grandson Paul Matisse was born in New York.

For the daunting task of Barnes' mural, Matisse had hired the 22-year-old Russian émigré Lydia Delectorskaya (1910–1998) as his assistant, who also sat as a model for him. Thereupon he was given the alternative by his wife Amélie: "I or she." Lydia Delectorskaya was dismissed, but Amélie asked for a divorce and left him after 31 years of marriage. Matisse got very sick and hired Delectorskaya again. After a stay in Paris at the outbreak of World War II , he returned to Nice.

In the following years projects for tapestries and book illustrations were created. He erased scenes from the Odyssey as illustrations for Ulysses by James Joyce . In November 1931, the Museum of Modern Art gave Matisse the opportunity for his first major American solo exhibition in New York. This was preceded by an important exhibition in the Berlin gallery Thannhauser in the late summer of 1930. The years 1930 to 1931 brought many of Matisse's personal plans to maturity and cemented his already growing international reputation. The first book illustrated by Matisse was published in October, the Skira edition of Poésie de Stéphane Mallarmé .

In 1937 Matisse was asked by Léonide Massine to design decorations and costumes for Rouge et noir , a ballet with music by Shostakovich and choreography by Massine. A year later he moved to the former Hotel Régina in Cimiez, with a view of Nice.

Serious illness - work on jazz (1941-1946)

In the foreground the Musée Matisse in Cimiez, Nice, in the background the Hotel Régina , where Matisse lived in old age

In 1941 Matisse had to undergo a serious bowel operation in Lyon. He stayed in the clinic for almost three months, then in the hotel for two months with the flu. He suffered from duodenal cancer and two subsequent pulmonary embolisms .

In May he returned to Cimiez. The operation and the illness that followed took him seriously, so that he could only stay upright for a limited time. During his convalescence he began to work again, he painted and drew in bed, including the illustrations for the Fabiani edition of Henry de Montherlants Pasiphaé and the Skira edition of the Florilège des amours de Ronsard .

Montagne du Baou

In his studio, which he moved into after an air raid on Cimiez in 1943, at the foot of the Montagne du Baou in the Villa Le Rêve , two kilometers from the main square of the Provencal village of Vence , Matisse began to work on his editing and pasting compositions for his book Jazz . In 1944 his divorced wife was arrested and daughter Marguerite was deported for participating in the Resistance and sentenced to six months in prison. Le Rêve remained his residence until 1948, when he returned to Nice at the Hotel Régina .

In the early summer of 1945 Matisse traveled to Paris, where 37 works were shown in a retrospective at the Salon d'Automne . In the same year he exhibited together with Picasso at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1946 Matisse received a first visit from Picasso and his partner Françoise Gilot in Vence; the two artists met several times until 1954.

Last Years - The Chapel in Vence (1947-1954)

Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, exterior view

In 1947, Matisse was promoted to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor . In the same year he began to design a chapel for the Dominican Sisters , the Rosary Chapel in Vence, which would occupy him almost exclusively for the next few years. The project was the result of a close friendship between Matisse and sister Jacques-Marie alias Monique Bourgeois. He had hired her as a nurse and model in 1941; In 1946 she entered a Dominican monastery in Vence and was given the name Jacques-Marie. When they met again there, she asked him for advice on building a chapel for the monastery. The foundation stone for the chapel was laid in December 1949, and it was consecrated on June 25, 1951 by the Bishop of Nice. In the same year Matisse received the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale .

Henri Matisse, Jean Vincent de Crozals and Annelies Nelck (from right to left) in the garden of Villa La Jonque in Vence 1953

In connection with his works exhibited in the USA in 1951, the American art historian Alfred H. Barr published Matisse: his Art and his Public , which is an important book about the artist to this day. In 1952, the Musée Henri Matisse opened its doors in his hometown of Le Cateau-Cambrésis. A year later, the papiers découpés exhibited in Paris and his sculptures in London. In 1954 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

In the last days of his life, Matisse worked on what would become his last work on the Rockefeller Rose , a stained glass window for the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, which he designed for the Nelson Rockefeller family in memory of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller . In addition to Matisse's work, the church also contains windows by Marc Chagall .

Gravestone in the Cimiez cemetery

Matisse died of a heart attack on November 3, 1954 in Nice. His grave - the memorial stone is dedicated to him and his former wife - is on the highest point of the Cimiez cemetery; it is a gift from the city of Nice.

On January 5, 1963, another museum, the Musée Matisse, was founded in Nice. On October 21, 1953, the artist himself donated the painting Still Life with Pomegranate (1947), four drawings from 1941/42, the paper cut The Creole Dancer (1950) and the two silk prints, Oceania - The Sea and Oceania - Heaven , both from 1947. Further donations from the heirs followed between 1960 and 1978.

The painterly work

“The teachers at Beaux-Arts used to say: 'Be stubborn to nature!' Throughout my career I have rebelled against this attitude to which I could not submit. This conflict resulted in various turns in my path, which was a constant search for possibilities of expression beyond the lifelike imitation; such turns were, for example, Divisionism and Fauvism . "

- Henri Matisse, 1951

Matisse's conception of the image

In Matisse's imagery, the use of two-dimensional, decorative and ornamental elements gives color an autonomous character, omitting its spatial design aspects. The coloring is neither subject to the local color nor to the description of surface structures. Rather, Matisse uses them as a means of reproducing the color sensations triggered by the impression of the motif in the painter. On his way through Fauvism he created a world of images in which no more importance is attached to the object than to the interior, that is, the space between the objects. None of these forms is superior or subordinate to another in the realization of the 'expression' ('expression and statement') as a design element. According to this view , the 'expression' can only be realized through the arrangement and connection of the color forms - color and form are one - with one another. Through this perspective, observation of nature (object) is raised not only as an occasion for color sensations (subject), but also as a corrective within the creative process in its mutual interaction. In this sense, Matisse saw himself connected to tradition . Matisse - like Picasso - never took the step towards total abstraction , since in this way, as he emphasized, abstraction is only imitated.

Another characteristic of Matisse's composition is that he linearizes the objects . The spatial relationships between the objects fade into the background, are dissolved, but without completely negating their spatial relationships . He emphasized that the equality of forms - object and interior space - as well as the autonomy of color necessitated a linearization of the picture elements and vice versa.

The growing need for originality and individuality on the one hand and the aversion to the "degenerate" perspectives of the still established academies from the point of view of their opponents on the other led many painters to want to take their own position. Matisse found the figure of the spiritus rector in Cézanne , but he did not intend to continue Cézanne's work.

The early work up to 1900

Matisse made a late decision on an artistic career. As a 20-year-old paralegal in St. Quentin, he began taking art classes. His first pictures corresponded to the bourgeois naturalism that the French school had adopted from the Dutch . A well-known painting from this period is Die Lesende from 1894, which is now in the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. In his pictorial themes, women from early to late work in the 1950s will dominate his art, represented in Matisse's various phases. The still life with self-portrait in similar brown-green colors followed in 1895. In terms of its aesthetics, it is similar to Cézanne's twenty years older still life, without having the sophistication. Well-known paintings from 1897 are The Set Table and the Seascape, Belle Île ; in the latter there are approximations to Claude Monet's storm in Belle Île from 1896, which reflects the Impressionist influences of Monet and John Peter Russell in Brittany .

The main work of the artist can be divided into the following five periods:

Fauve period (1900-1908)

Paul Cézanne : House in Provence , 1882–1885
Georges Seurat : A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte , 1884–1886

In 1900 Matisse began painting in a style known as "Proto-Fauve". He did not want to see his forms dissolved in light, but to see them as a complete whole, and so he moved away from “orthodox” impressionism. These were in addition to the work of Paul Cézanne the divisionistic work of Seurat , where he devoted his attention. Georges Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists created their works according to the theoretical teaching based on Eugène Chevreul's color theory . In addition to Seurat, it was Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin who increased Matisse's sense of color; he wanted to overcome the imitation of nature. Matisse's figure composition Luxus, Stille und Desierde (1904/05), for example, was created according to Divisionist rules. A little later he realized that the Divisionist conception of images was not suited to give the works of art stability and to reproduce the painter's color sensations, so he turned away from the Impressionist direction, as Cézanne had done years before him.

The result of his work during his Fauvist phase represented a solution in the form of a two-dimensional color scheme, which opposes the "dissolving" of impressionistic images. Examples are Open Window in Collioure and Woman with Hat , both from 1905, which caused outrage at the exhibition in the Salon and thus led to the term “Fauvism”. In his painting The Green Stripe. In the portrait of Madame Matisse , also from 1905, the green is a constant. The stripe above the face, which at first glance seems unnatural, is not set arbitrarily, but serves as a border between the light and shadow zone. Matisse showed that the autonomy of color in connection with its planar application means that the objects can be linearized with one another, and that their spatial relationships have to take a back seat. The works of the following years are primarily variations on this fundamental insight.

According to his own statement, his life's work began with the painting Die Lebensfreude , which he exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants in 1906, where it aroused fierce criticism. After the trip to Algeria in 1906, Blue Nude (memory of Biskra) was created , the palm trees in the background reflect the trip. The female nude weighs heavily on the floor and casts a shadow. The dominant figure and the two-dimensional surroundings reflect Matisse's view: “It is the figure and not the still life or the landscape that interests me most. With her I can best, you could say, express my own religious feeling towards life. "

Experimental period (1908-1917)

“The Impressionists' pictures are full of contradicting impressions. We want something different, we want to achieve inner balance by simplifying ideas and creative forms. "

- Henri Matisse, 1909

Matisse's experimental period, in which he was very productive, is divided into two phases: from 1908 to 1910, organic-liquid and arabesque forms predominate, while the second phase, from 1911 to 1917, characterized by Matisse's exploration of cubism , by geometric shapes is dominated. Matisse never subordinated his painting to a uniform style, instead he frequently changed positions, from decorative to more realistic periods.

In 1909, the Russian art patron Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin commissioned two large works, La Danse ( The Dance ) and La Musique (The Music) , which were to decorate the stairwell of his Moscow domicile. From dance two versions emerged in different shades. Matisse was inspired by the Provencal round dance Farandole . The pictures, each consisting of five bodies in front of a strongly colored background, convey joie de vivre, the decorative style is combined with the human figure. Its monumentality results from the simplification of the painterly means: a few colors are applied in large, homogeneous surfaces, the drawing becomes a pure line that forms the forms. The dance is one of Matisse's most famous works. The painting Bouquet of Flowers and Ceramic Plate (1911) is also determined by the simplification of the forms . Henri Matisse summarized his impressions of Russian icons and objects made of enamel in an interview for the newspaper Utro Rossii ( Утро России ) on October 27, 1911 during his stay in Moscow:

“That is the real primitive, that is authentic folk art. That is the original source of the artistic search. Today's artist should find his inspiration here, in these objects of primitive art. "

During the First World War , its color palette became darker, the reduction to geometric shapes based on Cubism reached its climax in 1914 with the picture View of Notre Dame and continued until 1918. The color black played an important role in the war years, an example is the door window in Collioure , 1914.

Nice period (1917–1929)

Matisse devoted himself, among other things, to painting odalisques in various positions. Also portraits , light-filled interiors, still lifes , landscapes were his representation of interest in the center. His works showed more naturalistic traits than ever before. By realizing his imaginative performance, Matisse proved his belief in painting as a “source of unadulterated joy”.

The love for color and detail is evident from the often unusual " ornamental background". The painting Decorative Figure against an Ornamental Background (1925/26) shows the emblematic attributes of his painting: a woman, flowers and colorful fabrics in the background. It is one of the most important works of the “Nice Period”. His model at the time was Henriette Darricarrère. In Nice he decorated his studio with sheets of fabric, carpets and curtains. The flower-strewn material appears in other works, for example in Zwei Odalisken (1927/28) and Odalisque with an armchair (1928).

Period of renewed simplicity (1929-1940)

The Nice period was followed by a period of renewed simplicity. Matisse's artistic endeavors focused on the harmony between the maximum possible development of color and a progressive abstraction of the representational form.

In 1929 he traveled to the United States and was a jury member of the 29th Carnegie International. A year later he traveled to Tahiti , New York and Baltimore , Maryland and Merion, Pennsylvania . Albert C. Barnes of Merion, a major modern art collector who already owned the largest Matisse collection in America, commissioned the artist to create a large mural for the art gallery in his home. Matisse chose a dance theme that had occupied him since his Fauvist phase. The mural The Dance exists in two versions due to an error in the dimensions; it was installed in May 1933 and is currently on display at the Barnes Foundation . The composition shows in its simplicity dancing women in extremely strong movement in front of an abstract, almost geometric background. In the preparatory work for the mural, Matisse used a new process by assembling the composition from cut-out pieces of colored paper. From 1940 onwards, paper cuttings became Matisse's preferred means of expression, a technique that he retained until the end of his life.

Period of restriction to the essentials (1940–1954)

The reduction of form to abstraction led Matisse to emphasize the dynamic element. Around 1943, because of his serious illness, paper cutting became one of the main means of expression in the artist's work; around 1948 Matisse finished entirely with painting. He had assistants paint sheets of paper with monochrome gouache paint from which he could cut out his figures and free forms (gouaches découpées). Matisse called this technique "drawing with scissors". It offered the possibility of combining line and color, and was therefore the solution he had sought for a long time. In the drawing he was able to show an impression in a few outlines, even if without color. This spontaneity was lacking in painting. When the scissors replace the brush and draw directly into the color, the contrast between color and line is overcome. The result - the cut - is sharper than the drawn line, so it has a different character. In 1947 a series of silhouettes from the years 1943 to 1944 was published as an artist's book under the title Jazz , which had been stenciled. The title alludes to the spontaneity and improvisation of the jazz music style . On the use of the lines, Matisse wrote in this book:

“The plumb bob determines the vertical direction and, together with its opponent, the horizontal, forms the draftsman's compass. […] The ' arabesque ' develops around this assumed line . I continued to benefit from the use of the lot. The vertical is drawn in my mind, it helps me to determine the direction of my lines precisely, and even in my quickly thrown drawings no line has emerged [...] without any relation to the vertical. - My lines are not crazy. "

- Henri Matisse

There were also designs for tapestries such as Polynesia - The Sky and Polynesia - The Sea , 1946. The design of a chapel, the Rosary Chapel (also called Chapelle Matisse), in Vence , inaugurated in 1951, whose stained glass windows he had also prepared in paper cutouts, shows the first stained glass by the artist. Another example is the series Blue Nudes from 1952; it is kept exclusively in blue and white and its abstraction has a sculptural effect.

The graphic work - book illustrations

Matisse created drawings, studies of his works, in large numbers. His interest in graphic work began around 1900 when he began to erase on a trial basis . The catalog raisonné of printmaking published by his daughter Marguerite Duthuit and his grandson Claude Duthuit describes around 800 works, with the focus on around 300 etchings and 300 lithographs from 1906 to 1952 , which were created between 1908 and 1948 . He also created 62 aquatint works , 68 monotypes , 70 linocuts and four woodcuts from the early 1906/07 period . In contrast to Picasso, Matisse refrained from trying out new materials and techniques. In 1935 Matisse made 26 full-page illustrations for the novel Ulysses by James Joyce . The illustrations are based on themes from Homer's Odyssey .

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Matisse's graphic work took up a larger space, so he designed illustrations for Henry de Montherlants Pasiphaé (1944), Pierre Reverdys Visages (1946), Mariana Alcaforados Lettres portugaises (1946), Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du Mal ( 1947), Pierre de Ronsards Florilège des Amours (1948) and Charles d'Orléans ' Poèmes (1950). These books were mostly provided with black and white illustrations; In contrast, he provided his well-known artist book Jazz from 1947, in which he wrote down his reflections on art and life, with colored illustrations.

The plastic work

More than half of Matisse's sculptures were created between 1900 and 1910. He often worked in series, simplifying the shape over the years. The first three-dimensional work of a total of 82, Jaguar Devouring a Hare , was created during his sculptural studies from 1899 onwards. It points not only to the influence of Auguste Rodin , but also to Antoine-Louis Barye , a well-known French sculptor who was known for its animal sculptures. After his bronze sculpture Jaguar dévorant un lièvre, Matisse modeled the Jaguar sculpture on which he worked from 1899 to 1901. The sculpture Der Knecht was created like the painting of the same name in 1900 and was finished in 1903. He was modeled on the Italian Bevilaqua, who had already been a model for Rodin in his work John the Baptist (1878) and Walking Man (1900). Matisse often converted motifs from his sculptures into paintings or vice versa. The size of his sculptures did not correspond to life size as with traditional sculptors, but they were created in a smaller format.

In 1907 he began working on the reclining nude , which he had developed from the painting Luxus, Stille und Desierde (1904–1905). The subject was to occupy him for 30 years. The sculpture Two Negresses from 1908 can be found again on his still life from 1910, bronze with fruits . Cézanne's painting, The Three Bathers , acquired in 1899, served Matisse as a model in works that depict the body monumentally, such as in the relief series of nudes from the back that Matisse created between 1909 and 1929. The inspiration for the series Jeannette I - V from 1910 to 1913 was an earlier impressionist painting, the head of Jeanette was alienated more and more in the versions. Jeanette V forms a preliminary stage to physical abstraction, which later spread in art from the 1930s onwards. The stimuli from primitive art were not reflected in his paintings, as was the case with Picasso, but his transformations were limited in this regard to the sculptural work.

Almost all of his sculptures consisted of an edition of ten copies, with one exception: The Small Thin Torso from 1929 only exists in three copies. Matisse used the sand and lost wax casting techniques . Most of his sculptural works were cast in later years when a larger number of collectors became interested. The back files I - IV , which are among the most important Matisse sculptures, were only cast after Matisse's death at the instigation of his heirs. In the 1990s, the heirs had most of the original forms destroyed in order to prevent further editions.

Art theoretical writings

Among the four greatest French painters of the first half of the 20th century - Matisse, Picasso, Derain and Braque - Matisse was the first theoretician. His writing from 1908, Notes d'un peintre (Notes by a Painter) , preceded the published statements by Braque and Picasso by some time. Although Braque's earliest interview (1908) was published in 1910, his texts did not come out until 1917. Picasso's first theoretical statement, Picasso speaks , came out in May 1923.

In a painter's notes , Matisse clarified the main concerns of his art: "Expression", the intellectual processing of natural forms, clarity and color. Furthermore, in this article he professes his belief in art as an expression of personality. For him it is neither a representation of an “imagination” nor a mediator of literary ideas, but he bases it on the intuitive synthesis of impressions of nature. A central, often quoted passage in this publication reads:

“I dream of an art of balance, purity, calm, without disturbing and obtrusive objects, of an art that is a sedative for every intellectual worker, for the businessman as well as for the literary man, a relaxation for the brain , something like a good armchair in which one can recover from physical exertion. "

- Matisse - About art . P. 75

The second theoretical text Notes d'un peintre sur son dessin (A painter's notes on drawing) appeared in Le Point in 1939 . In the years after 1930 he created many line drawings that were executed with pencil or pen; The pen drawings, as Matisse defined, “came about after hundreds of drawings, after experiments, findings and definitions of form; then I drew them with my eyes closed. "

reception

Testimonies from contemporaries

The impressionist Auguste Renoir , who was many years his senior , said to Henri Matisse at the end of the First World War when he visited him in the south of France:

"I would really like to say that you are not a really good painter [...] But there is something that prevents me from telling you that. If you use the black, it will stay right there on the canvas. All my life I have always said that you can no longer use black without making a hole in the canvas. It's not a color. Well, you speak the language of colors. And yet you take black and make it stay in place. Although I don't like what you do at all, and I tend to tell you that you are a bad painter, I guess you are a painter after all. "

- Auguste Renoir

In 1905, his painter colleague Paul Signac , who was six years older than him , bought the painting Luxus, Silence and Lust, exhibited by Matisse in the Salon des Indépendants . A year later, the neo-impressionist mocked Matisse's work, Die Lebensfreude, which was exhibited in the salon :

“Matisse, whose attempts I have valued so far, seems to have gotten on a completely wrong path. On a two and a half meter long picture he has outlined strange figures with a line thick with a thumb. Then he covered the whole thing with lackluster, clearly delineated hues that, as pure as they are, look disgusting. Ah, those light pink tones. That reminds [...] of the most hideous ' cloisonism ' of the blessed Anquetin and of the colorful shop signs of the iron and haberdashery dealers. "

- Paul Signac

Gertrude Stein , Matisse's sponsor, described his painting from 1907 Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra) and his intention as follows:

“In this picture, Matisse for the first time consciously implements his intention to trace the lines of the human body in order to harmonize and simplify the painterly value of the unmixed colors, which he only used in conjunction with white. He uses this systematically twisted drawing exactly as one uses dissonance in music , vinegar or lemon in the kitchen [...]. "

- Gertrude Stein
Albert Weisgerber, Hans Purrmann and Henri Matisse in Munich, 1910

Matisse's pupil and friend, the German painter Hans Purrmann , organized an exhibition in Berlin in 1908 at Paul Cassirer's gallery . The exhibition met with criticism. At a joint meeting with Max Liebermann in the gallery, the latter feared “spoiling the youth” when he saw the pictures and preferred to deal with his dachshund. “Gingerbread painting” and “wallpaper” were the catchphrases of Matisse's painting at that time. A few years before Matisse's death, Purrmann commented on his late life circumstances:

“[...] His life proceeds in peaceful, almost tragic-monastic solitude. I even heard him complain of a lack of friends. He lacks the restlessness that clings to other people, and yet he is inwardly constantly struggling with himself. Once I found him copying poems in decorative handwriting. I assumed he wanted to illustrate the poems - no. He did as his clergyman reads his breviary. "

- Hans Purrmann

Picasso very often expressed his appreciation for Matisse. Of the many utterances by Picasso, however, the one below shows most clearly how much Picasso recognized Matisse's work:

“Matisse has such good lungs. I mean the way he uses the color. If you find three tones in Matisse's work that are close together - say a green, a purple, and a turquoise - then their connection conjures up another color, which one could call the color. This is called the language of colors. […] The fact that there is a certain red spot on one of my pictures is not the essence of the picture. The picture was painted independently. You could take away the red and the picture would still be there. But with Matisse it is unthinkable that you can suppress a spot of red [...] without the image collapsing immediately. "

- Pablo Picasso

Relationship with Picasso

Pablo Picasso in 1962

Matisse was the only contemporary artist whom Picasso considered an equal. No other contemporary artist had meant so much to him as Matisse, despite their opposing artistic orientations. There was a lively exchange during their meetings. "We have to talk to each other as much as we can," Matisse said to Picasso in the late 1940s, adding: "When one of us dies, there will be some things the other cannot talk about to anyone else."

Picasso, who sometimes launched cruel insults, never allowed anyone else to criticize Matisse. Evidence of this is abundant, and one of the best among the numerous testimonies comes from Christian Zervos . Matisse and Picasso spent an afternoon in the coupole with several others . Matisse left the group for a moment. When someone asked where he had gone, Picasso replied that he was safely seated on his laurel wreath. Most of those present began to attack Matisse because they wanted to appeal to Picasso. Picasso got angry and shouted: "I will not allow you to say anything against Matisse, he is our greatest painter."

So the two paid tribute to each other. Picasso said: “Basically there is nothing but Matisse.” “Only Picasso can allow himself everything. He can confuse anything. Disfigure, mutilate, dismember. He's always, he's always right, ”said Matisse. “That is why Matisse, for example, is Matisse: because he has the sun in his body,” said Picasso.

The respectful artistic relationship between these two benchmark-setting artists of the 20th century is emphasized in detail by Françoise Gilot in her book Matisse and Picasso - An Artist Friendship.

Their contradiction was evident in the fundamental questions about the character of the picture and the meaning of art. Picasso wanted the dissonant, Matisse the harmonious image. Their contrasts stand out sharply in the following quotes: “Painting is not there to decorate apartments. It is a weapon of attack and defense, "said Picasso in an interview in" Lettres Françaises "in 1945. “A painting on the wall should be like a bouquet of flowers in the room,” Matisse said a few months later in the same magazine.

On the other hand, the work of Cézanne represents the connecting element. Like Matisse, Picasso had studied his painting and later said to the photographer Brassaï : “Cézanne! He was the father of all of us! ”Among other things, Matisse studied Cézanne's letters and he had in common with him the research instinct that strives to produce a fully“ realized ”image (see → réalisation in Cézanne ). This searching and research, which runs through Matisse's writings like a red thread, is very pronounced in Cézanne.

Matisse's resistance to abstract painting

In a conversation with Marie Raymond in 1953 , Matisse condemned abstract painting with persistent vehemence . “Terms like non-representational or abstract are nothing more than a protective shield to hide a defect.” And adds: “Just write it exactly as I tell you: Matisse is against abstract art. Picasso thinks just like me: everyone who has created a work thinks like me. "

When asked by Marie Raymond whether his late work shows a certain approximation of the experiments of the abstract, Matisse replied that art has always been abstract and that when he was younger he would start a campaign against abstract art.

Elsewhere, in order to justify his rejection of abstract painting, he emphasized that it only imitated abstraction.

Influence on Abstract Expressionism in the USA

After Mark Rothko , a representative of Abstract Expressionism , the end of the 1940s in New York's Museum of Modern Art Matisse's Red Studio ( The Red Studio , 1911) had seen was very impressed with it from the work of French artist, and it influenced much his own work. As Rothko once said, he spent "hours and hours" sitting in front of the painting. In 1954, the year Matisse died, Rothko painted Homage to Matisse ; this work fetched over $ 22 million at auction in November 2005.

American abstract expressionist painters such as Robert Motherwell , Sam Francis and Frank Stella and the color field painter Ellsworth Kelly were also influenced by Matisse's work.

Matisse and his models

There are numerous prejudices about Matisse's life and work - for example, that he should have had affairs with his female models . Hilary Spurling , the British Matisse biographer, has relegated this assumption to the realm of legend. She writes that letters, diary entries and reports from his companions paint a different picture: "They all described a system of monastic rigor and discipline, and all of Matisse's inhuman norm of self-mortification had pushed them to the limit of what was bearable." Spurling had extensive discussions with all models still alive.

Films about Matisse

The writer Louis Aragon met Henri Matisse in the winter of 1941 when he and Elsa Triolet fled from occupied France to Nice to continue their work in the Resistance there. A deep friendship developed, which resulted in Aragon's book about Matisse, Henri Matisse, roman , which, however, could only be completed shortly after Elsa's death in 1971. Aragon's work, with its mixture of autobiography and art criticism, as well as essays and poems, formed the basis for filmmaker Richard Dindo , who had already made documentaries about Max Frisch and Arthur Rimbaud , among others . In the 52-minute color film Aragon, le roman de Matisse, Dindo describes the return to the places where Matisse had lived. A successful montage condenses images and sounds into a cinematic reading of paintings, books and authentic locations. Production: Lea Produktion, Zurich 2003, directed by Richard Dindo.

Films were also made that are available as video films and that were broadcast by various television stations: Gero von Boehm shot Henri Matisse - the years in Nice , TV recording: ARD, October 4, 1988. Matisse - Picasso, an unlikely friendship of Philippe Kohly from the The year 2002 is a French film report, TV recording: 3sat , July 20, 2003. Henri Matisse - a cinematic journey , (OT: Henri Matisse - un voyage en peinture ), a film portrait, edited by Heinz Peter Schwerfel , Germany / France 2005, TV recording: Arte, December 10, 2005.

The half-hour television film Matisse & Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry was made in 2001; he deals with the portraits of the two "giants" in 20th century art. Among other things, it shows rarely published photographs of their paintings and sculptures as well as photos and films of the two artists from archives that show them at work. Geneviève Bujold is the voice of Françoise Gilot , Robert Clary is Matisse and Miguel Ferrer Picasso. The production, which was awarded a national Emmy , comes from KERA -Dallas / Fort Worth / Denton in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum , Fort Worth, Texas .

Matisse in the art market

Matisse's works often fetch top prices at auctions . Examples from recent years are the painting L'Espagnole (1922), which was auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York City in 2007 for $ 10.121 million, and the 1911 painting, Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose , which was published in February 2009 the auction of the art collection of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent by Christie’s in Paris achieved the record price for a Matisse painting. The hammer fell at 35,905,000 euros. In contrast to Picasso's works, however, his works cannot be found among the twelve most expensive paintings in the world . His bronze relief, Nu de dos 4 état , auctioned at Christie's on November 3, 2010, set the record for a Matisse work (in dollars): The Gagosian Gallery, New York, bought it for more than 48 million dollars (the equivalent of a good 43 Million Euros).

Portrait of a woman discovered at the Schwabing art find

At a press conference on the Schwabing art find on November 5, 2013, a portrait of a seated woman attributed to Matisse was shown, created around 1924, which was confiscated in 1942 by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg from the bank vault of the art dealer Paul Rosenberg in Libourne . The Schwabing art find is the discovery of 1280 works of art in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt on February 28, 2012. The works found there, some of which are unknown, include, in addition to Matisse's portrait, works by Marc Chagall , Otto Dix and Max Liebermann , Franz Marc or Pablo Picasso.

Matisse in everyday life and science

Rose named Henri Matisse, bred by Georges Delbard in 1993

The artist's works are so popular today that many posters with images of his works are offered as well as puzzles , for example the 1000-piece puzzle with the work The Dance . The car manufacturer Citroën not only produces a car with the name of its friend and antipode Picasso , but also the C Matisse since 2006 . Matisse's name is also represented in the music scene: in 1999 an alternative Greek rock band in Athens called themselves Matisse, and there is a music pub of the same name in Troisdorf . In 1993 a rose was bred that got his name.

On the planet Mercury , craters are named after deceased well-known personalities, for example after artists, painters, writers and musicians. The Matisse crater was named after Henri Matisse in 1976; it has an average diameter of around 190 kilometers and is located in the southern hemisphere of Mercury. On April 2, 1999, an asteroid of the main inner belt discovered in 1973 was named after Matisse: (8240) Matisse .

Exhibitions, museums (selection)

The Matisse Museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis
The Matisse Museum in Nice
  • Works by Henri Matisse were shown in Galerie 291 (1908, 1910, 1912), the Armory Show (1913), at documenta 1 (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964) in Kassel .
  • 1904: First solo exhibition at Ambroise Vollard , Paris
  • 1905: Group exhibition in the Salon d'Automne , the term Fauvism was coined here.
  • 1910: First exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune , Paris
  • 1919/1920: Exhibitions at Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
  • 1931–1933: Retrospectives in Berlin, Paris, Basel, New York
  • 1934/35: Several exhibitions in the New York gallery of his son Pierre Matisse
  • 1945: retrospective at the Salon d'Automne; joint exhibition with Picasso in London
  • 1949: Exhibition of paper cutouts and other new works at the Musée National d'Art Moderne , Paris
  • 1952: Opening of the Musée Matisse in his hometown of Le Cateau-Cambrésis
  • 1953: Exhibition of the silhouettes in the Berggruen Gallery , Paris and the sculptures in London
  • 1963: Opening of the Musée Matisse in Nice
  • 2002: Matisse - Picasso . Tate Modern, London; Les Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 2007: Matisse Jazz. The Musée Matisse visits Nuremberg . Germanisches Nationalmuseum & Musée Matisse , Nuremberg, July 18, 2007 to November 4, 2007
  • 2008/2009: Matisse - people mask models . Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Bucerius Kunst Forum , Hamburg
  • 2009/2010: Matisse - Rodin, une rencontre entre deux maîtres de l'art moderne , Musée Matisse, Nice; then in the Musée Rodin , Paris
  • 2010/11: Cézanne - Picasso - Giacometti . Masterpieces from the Fondation Beyeler, Leopold Museum , Vienna
  • 2012/13: In the rush of colors. Munch, Matisse and the Expressionists . Folkwang Museum , Essen
  • 2013/14: Matisse and the Fauves . Albertina , Vienna, September 20, 2013 to January 12, 2014
  • 2014: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs . Tate Gallery of Modern Art , London, April 17 to September 7, 2014.
  • 2015/16: Matisse Prints & Drawings , Baltimore Museum of Art , Baltimore, December 9, 2015 to July 3, 2016
  • 2016/17: Henri Matisse - Making the hand sing . Art Museum Pablo Picasso Münster , Münster, October 29, 2016 to February 12, 2017
  • 2017/18: Matisse - Bonnard : “Long live painting!” Städel , Frankfurt am Main, September 13, 2017 to January 14, 2018
  • 2017/18: Longing makes all things bloom ... Van Gogh to Cézanne, Bonnard to Matisse. Kunstmuseum Bern , August 11, 2017 to March 11, 2018
  • 2019/20: Inspiration Matisse . Kunsthalle Mannheim , September 27, 2019 to January 19, 2020
  • 2020: Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse, Hodler. The Hahnloser Collection. Albertina , Vienna, August 27 to November 15, 2020
  • 2020/21: Matisse, comme un roman. Center Georges-Pompidou , Paris, October 21, 2020 to February 22, 2021.

Works (selection)

Paintings and paper cuttings, graphic work

The sculptural work

  • 1899–1901: Jaguar devouring a hare , bronze, 22.8 × 57.1 cm, private collection • Fig.
  • 1900–1903: The Servant , bronze, height 92.3 cm, base 33 × 30.5 cm, Baltimore Museum of Art, Cone Collection • Fig.
  • 1906: Standing nude , bronze, height 48.2 cm, private collection
  • around 1909, 1914, 1916, 1930: Nude from behind I – IV , bronze, all in the Museum of Modern Art, New York • Fig.
  • 1910-1913: Jeanette I - V . Jeanette V : bronze, height 58.4 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario , Toronto • Fig.

Book illustrations

literature

Primary literature

Secondary literature

Overall biographical presentations

Fiction

Stages of life

Eyewitness accounts

  • Hans Purrmann : About Henri Matisse . In: Henri Matisse Color and Parable. Collected Writings . Edited by Peter Schifferli , Fischer Bücherei No. 324, Fischer Bücherei KG, Frankfurt a. M. 1960, o. ISBN, pp. 121-154.

Individual aspects of the work

  • Olivier Berggruen , Max Hollein (Ed.): Henri Matisse. Draw with scissors. Masterpieces from the last few years . Exhibition catalog. Prestel, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7913-2798-4 .
  • John Bidwell et al .: Graphic passion. Matisse and the book arts . University Park, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press 2015, ISBN 978-0-271-07111-4 (English).
  • Sylvie Forestier, Marie-Thérèse Pulvenis de Séligny: Matisse. The cut out sky. The late paper cuttings . Wienand, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86832-102-9
  • Xavier Girard, Sandor Kuthy: Henri Matisse 1869–1954 - Sculptures and Prints - Sculptures et gravures . Exhibition catalog (November 30, 1990 to February 10, 1991), Kunstmuseum Bern  / Musée des beaux-arts de Berne, Bern 1990, ISBN 3-7165-0768-7
  • Ernst-Gerhard Güse (Ed.): Henri Matisse. Drawings and sculptures . Exhibition catalog for the exhibition in the Saarland Museum Saarbrücken (May 12 - July 7, 1991). Prestel, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-7913-1124-7
  • Gotthard Jedlicka : The Matisse Chapel in Vence - Rosary Chapel of the Dominican Sisters . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1955
  • Beatrice Lavarini: Henri Matisse: JAZZ (1943-1947). A painter's book as a self-confession . scaneg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-89235-079-5 .
  • Thomas Levy and Carl-Jürgen Tohmfor: The Café du Dôme and the Académie Matisse . Schimper, Schwetzingen 1988, ISBN 978-3-87742-033-1
  • Annette Ludwig : Magic Festival of Light. Matisse in Morocco: paintings and drawings . Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-19226-8
  • Markus Müller (Ed.): Matisse - Picasso. Your artistic dialogue in book illustrative work . Exhibition catalog for the exhibition in the Graphics Museum Pablo Picasso Münster (February 18 - May 25, 2005), Münster 2005
  • Pia Müller-Tamm (Ed.): Henri Matisse. Figure, color, space . Exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (October 29, 2005 to February 19, 2006). Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1600-9
  • Henri Matisse, Nina Hollein, Max Hollein : Schnipp, Schnapp, Matisse . Prestel, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7913-2753-4 .
  • Otfried Schütz: Henri Matisse. The blue files . Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 3-458-33495-5
  • Dania Thomas: Henri Matisse. 'The Dance' and 'The Music' . VDM-Verlag, Saarbrücken 2008, ISBN 978-3-8364-9561-5
  • Ortrud Westheider : Matisse: people masks models . Hirmer, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4385-0

Effect and reception

  • Alfred H. Barr : Matisse. His Art and his Public . First edition 1951. Little, Brown & Co, Boston 1974, ISBN 0-87070-469-9
  • The great inspiration. German artists in the Académie Matisse, part III . Exhibition catalog, Kunstmuseum Ahlen 2004/05

Catalog raisonné

  • Claude Duthuit, Marguerite Duthuit-Matisse (eds.): Henri Matisse. Catalog raisonné de l'Œuvre Gravé . Two volumes. Paris, 1983
  • Claude Duthuit (Ed.): Henri Matisse. Catalog raisonné des ouvrages illustrées . Paris, 1988
  • Claude Duthuit (Ed.): Henri Matisse. Catalog raisonné de l'Œuvre Sculpté . Duthuit, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-904852-04-2
  • Pierre Schneider, Massimo Carrà: Tout l'uvre peint de Matisse 1904–1928 . Paris 1982

Films (selection)

  • An Essay on Matisse. Documentary, USA, 1996, 57 min., Script and director: Perry Wolff, production: Great Projects Film Company, first broadcast on PBS . An Essay on Matisse in the Internet Movie Database . The documentary received an Oscar nomination in 1996 in the Short documentary category .
  • Matisse - Picasso. An unlikely friendship. (OT: Matisse - Picasso , 52 min.) Documentary, France, 2002, 47:22 min., Script and direction: Philippe Kohly, production: Les Films d'Ici, RM Associates, 3sat , France 3 , France 5 . Matisse - Picasso in the Internet Movie Database (English), OCLC 717913551 .
    The film shows rarely published photographs of her paintings and sculptures as well as photos and films from archives while she is working.
  • Henri Matisse. The colors of the south. Documentary, Germany, 2005, 43:10 min., Script and direction: Evelyn Schels , production: BR , series: Lido , summary ( memento from November 24, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) from Bavarian television .
  • Henri Matisse - a cinematic journey. (OT: Henri Matisse - un voyage en peinture. ) Documentary, Germany, France, 2005, 26:08 min., Script and director: Heinz Peter Schwerfel , production: Artcore Film, WDR , arte, first broadcast: December 10, 2005 at arte .
  • Matisse - In search of the light. (OT: Matisse voyageur, en quête de la lumière. ) Documentary, France, 2019, 51:29 min., Script and director: Raphaël Millet, production: arte France, CC&C, Man's Films, Nocturnes Productions, RTBF , Le Center Pompidou , First broadcast: May 31, 2020 by arte, table of contents by ARD .

Web links

Commons : Henri Matisse  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Museums

Biographies

images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , back cover, 1997, ISBN 3-7852-8406-3 .
  2. ^ Anna Katharina Feldhaus: Henri Matisse - painting with scissors. In: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. April 5, 2013, accessed December 14, 2020 .
  3. ^ Henri Matisse: Color and Parable , p. 110.
  4. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 7, 92
  5. ^ Book review: Henri and Pierre Matisse. ( Memento from July 24, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Cosmopolis.ch , No. January 2, 1999.
  6. ^ Jill Kitson: The Unknown Matisse . In: ABC . August 5, 2005, accessed December 14, 2020 . Interview with the Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling.
  7. ↑ a b Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 92
  8. ^ Obituaries: Marguerite Duthuit. In: New York Times . April 3, 1982, accessed December 14, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Paris 1900. (No longer available online.) In: Kulturportal Paris. Archived from the original on December 1, 2008 ; Retrieved March 20, 2009 .
  10. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , p. 63
  11. ↑ Hilary Spurling: The Unknown Matisse , Vol. I, University of California Press 2001, ISBN 0-520-22203-2 , p. 232, limited preview in Google Book Search.
  12. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 11 ff
  13. ↑ a b Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 14
  14. ^ John Elderfield: The Wild Beasts Fauvism and Its Affinities, 1976, Museum of Modern Art , p. 43, ISBN 0-87070-638-1 . Translation: (A sculpture by) "Donatello in the midst of the wild"
  15. ↑ Stefana Sabin: Gertrude Stein . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-50530-4 , p. 36
  16. ^ Maison du Fauvisme. Le chemin du Fauvisme. In: Municipality of Collioure , accessed December 14, 2020.
  17. ↑ a b Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 19
  18. ^ The Cone Collection. In: Baltimore Museum of Art . Retrieved December 14, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 21-23
  20. ↑ Eric Gelber: The Academie Matisse. In: artnet.com. 2001, accessed April 2, 2009 .
  21. ^ Gerhard Charles Rump: Expressive coloristics: The German Matisse students. In: Die Welt , October 24, 2000, accessed December 14, 2020.
  22. ↑ Biography: The Personal Life of Henri Matisse. In: henri-matisse.net , 2011, (English), accessed on December 14, 2020.
  23. ↑ Ulrike Lorenz , Norbert Wolf (ed.): Brücke - The German "Wild" and the Birth of Expressionism , Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2008, p. 12 f.
  24. ↑ Sandra Orienti: Henri Matisse. (No longer available online.) In: g26.ch/art. Archived from the original on February 2, 2009 ; Retrieved April 2, 2009 .
  25. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 28–39.
  26. ↑ Melissa Seckora: Modern Champions . (No longer available online.) In: National Review . February 3, 2001, archived from the original on October 1, 2009 ; Retrieved August 12, 2009 .
  27. ↑ Walter Pach biography. In: askart.com , only beginning of the article, “Full access to biographies is free each Friday”, accessed on December 13, 2020.
  28. ↑ a b c André Verdet : A propos du dessin et des odalisques. In: Entretiens, notes et écrits sur la peinture: Braque, Léger, Matisse, Picasso . Éditions Galilée, Paris 1978. Reprinted in: Henri Matisse , Jack D. Flam (Eds.), Könemann, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-89508-009-8 , p. 152.
  29. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 42–48
  30. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 51–54, 94
  31. ↑ A. Isergina: French painting of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century , ed. from Hermitage Leningrad, Aurora-Kunstverlag, Leningrad 1987, DNB 20664437X .
  32. ^ A b Roy Donald McMullen: Henry Matisse. French artist. In: Encyclopedia Britannica . Retrieved December 13, 2020 .
  33. ↑ Phyllis Tuchman: "I Shall Always Love Painting More." Review of Matisse the Master by Hilary Spurling. ( Memento of December 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: The Washington Post , September 25, 2005.
  34. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 95
  35. ^ Henri Matisse: Drawing with scissors . (No longer available online.) In: Schirn Kunsthalle . Archived from the original on March 27, 2005 ; accessed on April 5, 2009 (PDF).
  36. ^ Honorary Members: Henri Matisse. In: American Academy of Arts and Letters . Retrieved December 14, 2020 .
  37. ^ Union Church of Pocantico Hills. (No longer available online.) In: Historic Hudson Valley. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012 ; Retrieved September 13, 2012 .
  38. ↑ see in: Musée Matisse in Cimiez, Nice.
  39. ^ Henri Matisse: Color and Parable , p. 105. From: Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence , 1951
  40. ^ A b André Verdet, Entretiens avec Henri Matisse , in: Prestige de Matisse , Paris 1952, pp. 37-76
  41. ^ Matisse - About Art , Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, 1982, pp. 11-12
  42. ↑ Escholier, 1937, p. 17; idem, 1956, p. 50
  43. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , pp. 9-18
  44. ↑ Matisse - About Art . P. 25
  45. ^ Matisse: Color and Light. ( Memento of November 27, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). In: National Gallery of Art , May / June 1999.
  46. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , p. 47 f
  47. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , pp. 50 ff
  48. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 16 f
  49. ↑ Volkmar Essers, Matisse , p. 18 ff.
  50. ^ Henri Matisse. In: kunstzitate.de. Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  51. ↑ Pia Müller-Tamm : Henri Matisse: Figure Color Space . In: Art Aspects. Retrieved December 14, 2020 (two exhibitions 2005/06).
  52. ↑ Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha ( Труды Госсударственного Эрмитажа ) [= reports the state Hermitage museum ], Vol. 14, p 173, Leningrad 1973rd
  53. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , pp. 32–44
  54. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse . P. 142 f
  55. ↑ Karin Ego-Gaal: Henri Matisse - Figure Color Space. ( Memento of January 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Portal Art History , May 14, 2006.
  56. ^ Magdalena Dabrowski: Henri Matisse. In: MoMA . October 2004, accessed December 13, 2020 .
  57. ↑ Juliane Bardt: Art made of paper . Olms, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-487-13093-4 , p. 120
  58. ^ Henri Matisse: Color and Parable , p. 96.
  59. ^ Gisela Fischer: Henri Matisse. (Notes on the graphic work) In: Galerie Boiserée , Cologne, 2001, (PDF; 5.1 MB), accessed on December 13, 2020.
  60. ^ Henri Matisse Illustrates 1935 Edition of James Joyce's Ulysses. In: openculture.com. April 10, 2012, accessed December 14, 2020 .
  61. ^ Exhibition catalog: Henri Matisse. A retrospective. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1992, New York 1992, p. 85.
  62. ↑ Ellen McBreen: Henry Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. In: Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Retrieved December 14, 2020 (Volume 8, Issue 1, Spring 2009).
  63. ↑ Lawrence Gowing: Matisse , pp. 18 f, 34, 72, 79 f, 88 f, 102
  64. ^ Sculpture. In: henri-matisse.net .
  65. ↑ Gelett Burgess: The Wild Men of Paris , Architectural Record, May 1910, pp. 400-414
  66. ↑ Pensées et réflections sur la peinture . Nord-Sud, December 1917, pp. 3–5
  67. ↑ Picasso speaks . The Arts, May 1923, pp. 315-326
  68. ↑ Volmar Essers: Matisse , p. 70
  69. ^ A b Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake: Life with Picasso , McGraw-Hill, 1964. Reprinted in: Henri Matisse , Jack D. Flam (eds.), Könemann, Cologne 1994, pp. 371–374.
  70. ↑ Volkmar Essers: Matisse , p. 20
  71. ^ Henri Matisse: Color and Parable , p. 137. From: The memories of Hans Purrmann , in work , 1946.
  72. ^ Henri Matisse: Color and Parable , p. 154. From: The memories of Hans Purrmann , in work , 1946.
  73. ^ Pablo Picasso: About Art , Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1988, pp. 59–61.
  74. ↑ Patrick O'Brian: Pablo Picasso - A Biography . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. - Berlin - Vienna 1982, p. 225.
  75. ^ Petra Kipphoff : Exhibition in Zurich: Henri Matisse. The sun in the body. An artist keeps the world at a distance. ( Memento from September 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Die Zeit , November 5, 2002, No. 45.
  76. ↑ Uwe M. Schneede : 8. Picasso and Matisse - The genius of the century and his antipode , in: ders., The history of the art of the 20th century. CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-406-48197-0 , pp. 107–117, limited preview in the Google book search.
  77. ^ A b Petra Kipphoff: Henri Matisse 1904 - 1917: An exhibition in Paris shows the decisive years of the artist. Odalisque with nasturtiums? ( Memento from March 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ). In: Die Zeit , March 5, 1993, No. 10.
  78. ↑ Bernhard Grom , People and World Images of Modern Painting , Buch & Media Gesellschaft, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8330-1125-4 , p. 173, table of contents from the SWB .
  79. ^ Matisse - About art , ed. And introductory text: Jack D. Flam, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1982, limited preview in the Google book search.
  80. ^ A b Marie Raymond : Matisse contra de abstracts , in: Kroniek van Kunst en Kultuur , July-August 1953, pp. 227-229. Reprinted in: Henri Matisse , Jack D. Flam (Eds.), Könemann, Köln 1994, p. 382.
  81. ↑ Carter B. Horsley: Auctions Christies: Post-War and Contemporary Art, Mark Rothko. In: The City Review. Retrieved December 13, 2020 .
  82. ↑ Katja Engler: Matisse and the secret of women. In: Welt am Sonntag . January 25, 2009. Retrieved April 4, 2009 .
  83. ^ Marcy Goldberg: Aragon, le roman de Matisse. ( Memento from December 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Cinema , June 4, 2006.
  84. ^ Matisse & Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry in the Internet Movie Database .
    Matisse & Picasso. ( Memento of June 17, 2001 in the Internet Archive ). In: kera.org , 2001, OCLC 1117035751 .
    Film background: Matisse & Picasso , 2002.
  85. ↑ Lot 44: Henri Matisse 1869 - 1954 Espagnole (Buste). In: Sotheby’s , November 7, 2007.
  86. ↑ Auction February 2009. (No longer available online.) In: Christie’s . Archived from the original on March 19, 2015 ; Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  87. ↑ Christie's auction sets a new Matisse record. ( Memento of November 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In: Monopoly , November 4, 2010.
  88. ↑ Ira Mazzoni : The Recycler and His Son. In: Süddeutsche.de , November 4, 2013, accessed on December 13, 2020.
  89. ↑ Photography of the painting in: infobae.com , February 16, 2017.
  90. ^ Stefan Deiters: Messenger. View of the Matisse crater. In: astronews. January 24, 2008, accessed December 14, 2020 .
  91. ↑ Data of the asteroid (8240) Matisse (English), accessed on December 14, 2020.
  92. ^ Materials by and about Henri Matisse in the documenta archive
  93. ^ Exhibition: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs. In: Tate Gallery of Modern Art , 2014, accessed December 14, 2020.
  94. ^ Bettina Wohlfarth: Henri Matisse in Paris: A life to complete a vision. In: FAZ , October 30, 2020, discussion of the Matisse exhibition in the Center Pompidou.
  95. ↑ Perry Wolff. In: emmys.com .
  96. ^ Film background: Matisse & Picasso , 2002.
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personal data
SURNAME Matisse, Henri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Matisse, Henri Émile Benoît (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter, printmaker, draftsman and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Cateau-Cambrésis
DATE OF DEATH 3rd November 1954
PLACE OF DEATH Cimiez , now part of Nice