Henri Matisse paintings list - famous Matisse paintings for sale, art style and drawings artwork, and painter biography

Henri Matisse

Biography of Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse Biography

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.
-- Henri Matisse
Artist often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. He is studied in schools. The leader of the Fauvist movement around 1900, Matisse pursued the expressiveness of colour throughout his career. His subjects were largely domestic or figurative, and a distinct Mediterranean verve presides in the treatment. The best well-known Matisse paintings are Woman with a Hat, Madame Matisse.
(Biographie en français)

Biography: The Henri Matisse art of our century has been dominated by two men: Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They are artists of classical greatness, and their visionary forays into new Henri Matisse art have changed our understanding of the world. Matisse was the elder of the two, but he was a slower and more methodical man by temperament and it was Picasso who initially made the greater splash. Matisse, like Raphael, was a born leader and taught and encouraged other painters, while Picasso, like Michelangelo, inhibited them with his power: he was a natural czar.

His artistic career was long and varied, covering many different styles of painting from Impressionism to near Abstraction. Early on in his career Matisse was viewed as a Henri Matisse paintings fauvism, and his celebration of bright colors reached its peak in 1917 when he began to spend time on the French Riviera at Nice and Vence. Here Henri Matisse concentrated on reflecting the sensual color of his surroundings and completed some of most exciting Matisse paintings. In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed as having duodenal cancer and was permanently confined to a wheelchair. It was in this condition that he completed the magnificent Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. -  Matisse biography here, abstract painting and abstract art Woman with a Hat, Madame Matisse.

Henri Matisse art has an astonishing force and lives by innate right in a paradise world into which he draws all his viewers. Henri Matisse gravitated to the beautiful and produced some of the most powerful beauty ever painted. Matisse was a man of anxious temperament, just as Picasso, who saw him as his only rival, was a man of peasant fears, well concealed. Both artists, in their own fashion, dealt with these disturbances through the sublimation of painting: Picasso destroyed his fear of women in his art, while he coaxed his nervous tension into serenity. Henri Matisse spoke of Henri Matisse art as being like "a good armchair"-- a ludicrously inept comparison for such a brilliant man-- but Henri Matisse art was a respite, a reprieve, a comfort to him.

Matisse initially became famous as the King of the Fauves, an inappropriate name for this gentlemanly intellectual: there was no wildness in him, though there was much passion. Matisse is an awesomely controlled artist, and his spirit, his mind, always had the upper hand over the "beast" of Henri Matisse paintings fauvism.

The experimental years
His Fauvist years were superseded by an experimental period, as Henri Matisse abandoned three-dimensional effects in favor of dramatically simplified areas of pure color, flat shape, and strong pattern. The intellectual splendor of this dazzlingly beautiful art appealed to the Russian mentality, and many great Matisse are now in Russia. One is The Conversation (1909; 177 x 217 cm (5 ft 9 3/4 in x 7 ft 1 1/2 in)) in which husband and wife converse. But the conversation is voiceless. They are implacably opposed: the man-- a self portrait-- is dominating and upright, while the woman leans back sulkily in her chair. Matisse is imprisoned in it, shut in on all sides. The chair's arms hem her in, and yet the chair itself is almost indistinguishable from the background: she is stuck in the prison of her whole context. The open window offers escape; she is held back by an iron railing. Henri Matisse towers above, as dynamic as she is passive, every line of his striped pyjamas undeviatingly upright, a wholly directed man. His neck thickens to keep his outline straight and firm, an arrow of concentrated energy. The Matisse paintings images cannot contain him and his head continues beyond it and into the outside world. Henri Matisse is greater that it all, and the sole "word" of this inimical conversation is written in the scroll of the rail: Non. Does Henri Matisse say no to his intensity of life? They deny each other forever.

Matisse Paintings List