Henri Matisse The Clown (Le Clown) from Jazz 1947

  • MoMA, Floor 4, 406 The David Geffen Galleries

In the final decades of his life, Matisse invented a new form of art, the cut-out. Working with scissors and sheets of gouache-painted paper, he cut various shapes—from the organic to the geometric—and arranged them into lively compositions. Cut-outs formed the prototypes for the printed images in the illustrated book Jazz, which Matisse insisted remain absolutely faithful to the original colors. In response, the publisher turned to pochoir, a stencil printing technique in which the same gouaches could be used. Matisse created two versions of the prints: one for a portfolio and the second for the illustrated book, whose plates were interspersed with a text by Matisse, written in his looping calligraphy.

Gallery label from "Colllection 1940s—1970s", 2019
Medium
One from a portfolio of twenty pochoirs
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 16 1/4 x 12 9/16" (41.3 x 31.9 cm); sheet: 16 9/16 x 25 5/8" (42.1 x 65.1 cm)
Publisher
Tériade, Paris
Printer
Edmond Vairel, Paris, Draeger Frères, Paris
Edition
100
Credit
Gift of the artist
Object number
291.1948.1
Copyright
© 2024 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Portfolio
Jazz
Department
Drawings and Prints

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