Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954)
Medium: Color Lithograph
Edition No.: 1st Edition, Vol. IX, no. 35 & 36/6,500
Signed in plate, lower right
Publisher: Tériade, Paris
Printer: Mourlot Atelier, Paris
Dimensions: 11' x 14" (22.5" x 27" with frame)
Catalogue Raisonné: Duthuit 139, Freitag 6231
In 1941, due to illness, Matisse underwent surgery that left him unable to walk. Painting became a physical burden. He turned to an entirely new medium. He created cut paper collages, or découpage, by cutting sheets of paper, pre-painted with gouache, into shapes of varying colors and sizes, and arranged them to form dynamic compositions. What began as modest size works eventually transformed into room-sized murals, distinct with dimensional complexity, resulting as an art form that was not quite painting, but not quite sculpture. The gouache cut-outs are “the end-product of an entire life of work and the flowing of an enormous, sincere, and difficult effort”, and of a life devoted to exalting color and evoking the happiness of living and painting, which were for him, inseparable.
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