Henri Matisse
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Henri Matisse (1869–1954)
French painter and sculptor, who was the leader of the fauve group of painters in the early 1900s and is acknowledged as the twentieth century's master of colour. He won first prize at the Carnegie International at Pittsburgh, in 1927 and at the Venice Biennale in 1950. In 1925 he was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur and in 1947 was elevated to Commandeur.
The son of a grain merchant, Matisse studied law in Paris and worked in a lawyer's office before turning to painting during convalescence from appendicitis in 1890. He subsequently abandoned law and studied art in Paris. His early works were unadventurous but highly competent still lifes and interiors, executed while working part-time as a decorator. Around 1897 he became acquainted with the paintings of the impressionists and from this point colour became the most important element in his pictures. The energy and radical nature of his experiments with colour in such pictures as Portrait of Madame Matisse (1905) and Open Window Collioure (1905) ensured his leadership of the fauves. His aims, however, were different from those of the impressionists and of the short-lived fauve movement: in 1908 he wrote in his Notes d'un peintre, ‘I dream of an art of balance, purity and calm, without troubling or depressing themes, that will offer … a soothing influence.’ This aim is illustrated in the large figure compositions, increasingly simple in form, of the period 1905–10, including Luxe, calme et volupté (1905), Joie de vivre (1906), and La Danse (1909). During this period Matisse began to spend the summers painting in the south of France. He travelled widely between 1907 and 1914 and developed an admiration for Near East art, which inspired the exotic decorations that feature in many of his paintings.
After a less lyrical cubist-influenced phase during World War I, Matisse continued to celebrate the joys of life and, in contrast to his previous practice, incorporated modelling and perspective into his Odalisque paintings of the 1920s. He also produced some sculpture and from 1948 produced abstract pictures with cut-out coloured paper, such as The Snail (1953). Two of the greatest works of his maturity were commissions: the Dance murals for the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania (1930–32), and the decoration of the chapel at Vence (1949–51). In 1952 the Musée Matisse opened at Le Cateau-Cambrésis, where he was born.
Text source : Who's Who in the Twentieth Century (Market House Books)
