From the artist's life
Confined to bed late in life, Matisse painted with scissors, cutting shapes from painted paper to create his radiant final masterpieces.
Source: Wikipedia / WikimediaModernism
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was the master of colour and a founder of Fauvism, the great rival and counterpart to Picasso. In old age, unable to paint, he reinvented art again with his bold paper cut-outs.
Matisse freed colour from description, making it pure joy and structure; he and Picasso defined 20th-century art.
- Led the Fauves, whose wild, pure colour shocked Paris in 1905.
- His lifelong rivalry and dialogue with Picasso drove modern art forward.
- Reinvented himself with cut-paper collages when illness ended his painting.
Key works
Where to start
Complete list of key works
Works with a dedicated ArtAtlas page are highlighted in gold.
- DanceOn ArtAtlas
- L'Atelier RougeOn ArtAtlas
- The Open WindowOn ArtAtlas
- Woman with a hatListed for reference
- The Joy of LifeListed for reference
- The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room)Listed for reference
- The Green StripeListed for reference
- Woman ReadingListed for reference
- MusicListed for reference
- Blue NudeListed for reference
- Luxe, Calme et VoluptéListed for reference
- Chapelle du Rosaire de VenceListed for reference
- La Blouse roumaineListed for reference
1910
Dance
1911
L'Atelier Rouge
1905
The Open Window
Matisse painted this in the summer of 1905 at Collioure, a fishing village on the French Mediterranean coast — it was his first real breakthrough into pure, unblended color, done in roughly six weeks.