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1/22/2014

Matisse, Henri - Tate Modern London

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
is a groundbreaking reassessment of the colourful and innovative final works of modern art master, 
Bringing together around 120 works, many seen together for the first time, the exhibition celebrates the period in which Matisse began ‘cutting into colour’ and his series of spectacular cut-outs was born.
Henri Matisse is a leading figure of modern art and one of the most significant colourists of all time. In a career spanning over half a century, Matisse made a large body of work of which the cut-outs are a brilliant final chapter.
The drama, scale and innovation of these works, made between 1936 and 1954, remain without precedent or parallel. Matisse’s first cut-outs were collected together in Jazz 1947, a book of 20 plates. Copies of the book, featuring a text hand-written by Matisse, are shown alongside the original cut-outs.
Other major works in the exhibition include Tate’s The Snail 1953, its sister work Memory of Oceania 1953 and Large Composition with Masks 1953 at 10 metres long. A photograph of Matisse’s studio reveals that these works were initially conceived as a unified whole, and this is the first time they will have been together since they were made in Matisse’s studio. Matisse’s renewed interest in representing the figure is demonstrated by his famous Blue Nudes.
When ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he began to cut into painted paper with scissors as his primary technique to make maquettes for a number of commissions. In the cut-outs, outlines take on sculptural form and painted sheets of paper are infused with the luminosity of stained glass.(Text: Tate Modern London)