Henri Matisse_{Cut-outs - Drawing With Scissors}

The revolutionary late-period work by Matisse
Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for a longer period of time. In this late phase of his lifehe was almost 80 years of agehe developed the technique of carving into color, creating bright, bold paper cut-outs. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupées (gouache cut-outs) in fact represented a revolution in modern art, a whole new medium that re-imagined the age-old conflict between color and line.

This fresh, standard TASCHEN edition of our original prize-winning XL volume provides a thorough historical context to Matisses cut-outs, tracing their roots in his 1930 trip to Tahiti, through to his final years in Nice. It includes many photos of Matisse, some rare images, by Henri Cartier-Bresson and the filmmaker F.W. Murnau and text from Matisse, publisher E. Tériade, the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisses son-in-law, Georges Duthuit.

In their deceptive simplicity, the cut-outs achieved both a sculptural quality and an early minimalist abstraction which would profoundly influence generations of artists to come. Exuberant, multi-hued, and often grand in scale, these works are true pillars of 20th century art, and as bold and innovative to behold today as they were in Matisses lifetime.