Henri Matisse

Throughout his decades-long career as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, Henri Matisse continuously searched, in his own words, “for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means.”1 Celebrated as both an orchestrator of tonal harmonies and a draftsman capable of distilling a form to its essentials, he long sought a way to unite color and line in his work. The relationship between these two formal elements can be traced from early works like Dance (I)—in which the side of a dancer’s body, set against fields of rich blue and green, is described in a single, arcing contour—to his late cut-outs like The Swimming Pool, in which the artist discovered a way at the end of his life to “cut directly into vivid color.”2
Matisse was born in 1869 to generations of weavers in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, a northern French town whose woolen mills constituted the main industry. He was raised in nearby Bohain, famous for its luxury fabrics. This early exposure to textiles would shape his visual language: examples from his own collection of carpets and cloths from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East would deeply inform his sense of color and pattern and appear in his compositions.
Taking up painting after first studying law, Matisse studied with the Symbolist Gustave Moreau and participated in Paris’s official Salons. His breakthrough as an artist came during the summers of 1904 and 1905, when the bright sunlight of the South of France inspired him—along with artists like André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck—to create optically dynamic works of bright, clashing colors that led to these artists being derided with the epithet fauves (wild beasts). Known as Fauvism, the work from this period set him on a career-long path that he described as “construction by colored surfaces.”3 This approach remained central through the various stages of Matisse’s body of work—from his rigorous, abstracted paintings of the 1910s to the decorative, sunlit interiors of his so-called “Nice period” of the 1920s to the radically innovative cut-outs of his last decade.
Though much of his work—whether an ink drawing with a flowing arabesque line or a painting with flat expanses of unmodulated color—looks as if it might have been executed with effortless ease, Matisse cautioned that this effect was only an “apparent simplicity.” In reality, he labored exactingly to achieve the “art of balance, of purity and serenity” of which he dreamed.4
Introduction by Samantha Friedman, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2016
- Introduction
- Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi emil bənwɑ matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (wild beasts). Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern. In 1917, he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
- Wikidata
- Q5589
- Introduction
- Matisse became a painter relatively late in life; he was known as the principal protagonist of Fauvism, the first avant-garde movement at the turn of the century. He went on to develop a monumental decorative art, which was innovative both in its treatment of the human figure and in the constructive and expressive role accorded to colour. His long career culminated in a highly original series of works made of paper cut-outs, which confirmed his reputation, with Picasso, as one of the major artists of the 20th century.
- Nationality
- French
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Designer, Writer, Still Life Artist, Painter, Sculptor
- Names
- Henri Matisse, Henri Emile Benoît Matisse, Anri Matiss, Matisse, מאטיס, הנרי מאטיס, Henri Emile Benoit Matisse, h. matisse, matisse h., H. Matisse, matisse henri
- Ulan
- 500017300
Exhibitions
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Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury
Through Jun 5
MoMA
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Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond
Apr 16, 2020–Jan 2, 2021
MoMA
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406B: Henri Matisse’s The Swimming Pool
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape
Oct 21, 2019–Oct 4, 2020
MoMA
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506: Henri Matisse
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Henri Matisse has
240 exhibitionsonline.
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Henri Matisse Lemons and Bottle of Dutch Gin Paris early 1896
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Henri Matisse Still Life Paris, early 1899
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Henri Matisse Male Model Paris, c. 1900
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Henri Matisse The Weeper (La Pleureuse) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Four Nudes, Two Heads (Quatre nus, deux têtes) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Two Nudes, One Head (Deux nus, une tête) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Two Studies of a Nude (Deux études de nu) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Two Nudes, Two Heads of Children (Deux nus, deux têtes d'enfants) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Two Women in Street Costumes (Deux femmes en costume de ville) 1900–03
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Henri Matisse Standing Nude, Arms Covering her Face c. 1901–03
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Henri Matisse Henri Matisse Etching 1900–03
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Henri Matisse The Musketeer 1903
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Henri Matisse The Serf Paris, 1900-1904
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Henri Matisse Study for "Luxe, calme et volupté" 1904
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Henri Matisse La Japonaise: Woman beside the Water Collioure, summer 1905
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Henri Matisse Landscape at Collioure Collioure, summer 1905
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Henri Matisse Full Face Nude, Plunging View (Nu de face, vue plongeante) 1906
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Henri Matisse Torso with Arms Crossed (Torse aux bras croisés) 1906
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Henri Matisse Upside Down Head (Tête renversée) 1906
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Henri Matisse Le Grand Bois (The Large Woodcut) 1906
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Henri Matisse The Idol (L'Idole) 1906
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Henri Matisse Pensive Nude in Folding Chair (Figure pensive au fauteuil pliant) 1906
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Henri Matisse Woman's Head, Eyes Closed (Tête de femme, les yeux clos) 1906
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Henri Matisse Small Light Woodcut (Petit bois clair) 1906
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Henri Matisse Small Black Woodcut (Petit Bois noir) 1906
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Henri Matisse Nude with Right Foot on Stool (Nu au pied droit sur un tabouret) 1906
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Henri Matisse Half-Length Nude, Arms Bent Towards Eyes (Nu mi-allongé, bras repliés vers les yeux) 1906
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Henri Matisse Large Nude (Le Grand nu) 1906
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Henri Matisse Crouching Nude in Profile with Black Hair (Nu accroupi, profil à la chevelure noire) 1906
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Henri Matisse Crouching Nude, Eyes Lowered (Nu accroupi les yeux baissés) 1906
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Henri Matisse Portrait of Mme Manguin 1905–06
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Henri Matisse Study for Madeleine c. 1901
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Henri Matisse Interior with a Young Girl (Girl Reading) Paris 1905-06
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Henri Matisse Standing Nude Collioure 1906 (cast 1950)
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Henri Matisse Harbor at Collioure (Port de Collioure) 1907
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Henri Matisse Music (Sketch) Collioure, spring-summer 1907
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Henri Matisse Female Nude 1907
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Henri Matisse Seated Figure, Right Hand on Ground Paris, fall 1908 (cast c. 1930)
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Henri Matisse Bather Cavalière, summer 1909
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Henri Matisse La Serpentine Issy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1909
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Henri Matisse The Back (I) Paris, Couvent du Sacré Coeur, and Issy-les-Moulineaux, spring 1908-late 1909
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Henri Matisse Dance (I) Paris, Boulevard des Invalides, early 1909
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Henri Matisse Standing Woman Seen from Behind. Study for The Back (I) 1909
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Henri Matisse Untitled c. 1908–09
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Henri Matisse Jeannette (I) Issy-les-Moulineaux, January - March (?) 1910
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Henri Matisse Jeannette (II) Issy-les-Moulineaux, January - March (?) 1910
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Henri Matisse Girl with Tulips (Jeanne Vaderin) 1910
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Henri Matisse The Red Studio Issy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1911
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