H ENRI M ATISSE 1869 to 1954

H ENRI M ATISSE Matisse was born in France. Matisse art career started as a hobby. He was working as a clerk in a legal office when his art career took off. He did study art at Académie Julian. Then later he studied art at Gustave Moreau’s studio at the Ecole Beaux-Arts Matisse was married and had 3 children, at times he found it hard to make a living with his art. One particular time he had to move back in with is Father with his family.

M ATISSE 1896 Matisse had it first showing and it was very well received. However, it wasn’t until 1905 and 1906 that Matisse talent was fully developed and his style had matured. The group of artist he worked with and showed with in 1906 was called the “Wild Ones” (not a reference to their life style-it was in relation to their style of painting. The artwork work style that Matisse and his friends were credited for starting was Fauvism--where color was the important factor.

M ATISSE Matisse had many style though out his career. He started off as an impressionist artist and later in his life moved to abstraction. Matisse was diagnosed as having duodenal cancer in He spent the remainder of his life confined to a wheelchair. However this did not slow him down in terms of art. While undergoing treatment he stayed at the convent for Chapel of the Rosary in Venice, Italy. There he started creating his paper cutout figures and designs. He designed the stained-glass for the chapel.

M ATISSE “Picasso and Matisse were active to the end of their lives, but while Picasso was preoccupied with his ageing sexuality, Matisse moved into a period of selfless invention. In this last phase, too weak to stand at an easel, he created his papercuts, carving in colored paper, scissoring out shapes, and collaging them into sometimes vast pictures. These works, daringly brilliant, are the nearest he ever came to abstraction. Beasts of the Sea (1950; x 154 cm (9 ft 8 in x 5 ft 1/2 in)) gives a wonderful underwater feeling of fish, sea cucumbers, sea horses, and water-weeds, the liquid liberty of the submarine world where most of us can never go. Its geometric rightness and chromatic radiance sum up the two great gifts of this artist and it is easy to see why he is the greatest colorist of the 20th century. He understood how elements worked together, how colors and shapes could come to life most startingly when set in context: everything of Matisse's works together superbly.”

M ATISSE Matisse worked until the end of his life. What he left behind was a legacy of beautiful artwork, that show the glory and serenity of this world. Not the ugliness and evil that had been going on in the world while Matisse he was alive.

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