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Henri Matisse

1869–1954

Reclining Nude 1924
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Modern Art and St Ives

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Biography

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi emil bənwa matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual 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 colourism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (French for "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.

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Fauvism

Artworks

Left Right
  • Trivaux Pond

    Henri Matisse
    1916 or 1917
    On display at Tate St Ives part of Modern Art and St Ives
  • Nude Study in Blue

    Henri Matisse
    c.1899–1900
    On display at Tate Modern part of Media Networks
  • Reading Woman with Parasol

    Henri Matisse
    1921
  • The Inattentive Reader

    Henri Matisse
    1919
  • Notre-Dame

    Henri Matisse
    c.1900
  • Reclining Nude II

    Henri Matisse
    1927
  • André Derain

    Henri Matisse
    1905
  • The Dancer

    Henri Matisse
    1949
See all 19

Artist as subject

  • Mort

    R.B. Kitaj
    1966
    View by appointment
  • Matisse’s Studio Sublet to Spiderman

    Martin Kippenberger
    1996
    On display at Tate Modern part of Media Networks
  • Henri Matisse

    André Derain
    1905

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    Françoise Gilot on Matisse

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    Hilary Spurling on Matisse

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