A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition from the South Bank Centre, London
The French painter, sculptor and designer, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. His vibrant works are celebrated for their extraordinary richness and luminosity of colour. This exhibition featured 35 lithographic prints of the famous cut-outs, produced in the last four years of his life, when the artist was confined to his bed. It included many of his iconic images, such as The Snail and the Blue Nudes.
The lithographic reproductions in this exhibition were taken from a special double issue of Verve, a review of art and literature, published by Tériade, a major publisher of fine art books in 1958.
Matisse began his working life as a lawyer, before going to Paris to study art in 1890. At first strongly influenced by the Impressionists, he soon created his own style, using brilliant, pure colours, and started making sculptures as well as paintings. In 1905 he and his colleagues were branded the Fauves (wild beasts) because of their unconventional use of colour, and it was during this time that he painted his celebrated Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Luxury, Tranquillity and Delight). ‘There is no gap between my earlier pictures and my cut-outs’, Matisse wrote; ‘I have only reached a form reduced to the essential, through greater absoluteness and greater abstraction’.