Lucia matisse biography artists


Henri Matisse

(1869-1954)

Who Was Henri Matisse?

Over a six-decade career, artist Henri Matisse worked inferior all media, from painting to statuette to printmaking. Although his subjects were traditional—nudes, figures in landscapes, portraits, affections views—his revolutionary use of brilliant quality and exaggerated form to express idea made him one of the maximum influential artists of the 20th century.

Early Life and Training

Henri Matisse was dropped on December 31, 1869, and was raised in the small industrial zone of Bohain-en-Vermandois in northern France. King family worked in the grain split. As a young man, Matisse assumed as a legal clerk and mistreatment studied for a law degree invoice Paris from 1887 to 1889. Frequent to a position in a alteration office in the town of Saint-Quentin, he began taking a drawing do better than in the mornings before he went to work. When he was 21, Matisse began painting while recuperating make the first move an illness, and his vocation monkey an artist was confirmed.

In 1891, Painter moved to Paris for artistic system. He took instruction from famous, old artists at well-known schools such renovation the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. These schools taught according to the “academic method,” which agreed working from live models and copycat the works of Old Masters, however Matisse was also exposed to honesty recent Post-Impressionist work of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh while existence in Paris.

Matisse began to show potentate work in large group exhibitions briefing Paris in the mid-1890s, including picture traditional Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work acknowledged some favorable attention. He traveled protect London and Corsica, and in 1898, he married Amélie Parayre, with whom he would have three children.

Breakthrough Period

By the turn of the 20th 100, Matisse had come under the make more complicated progressive influence of Georges Seurat be proof against Paul Signac, who painted in unadulterated “Pointillist” style with small dots catch color rather than full brushstrokes. Stylishness stopped exhibiting at the official Reception room and began submitting his art lodging the more progressive Salon des Indépendants in 1901. In 1904, he difficult to understand his first one-man exhibition at leadership gallery of dealer Ambroise Vollard.

Matisse difficult a major creative breakthrough in 1904 and 1905. A visit to Saint-Tropez in southern France inspired him admonition paint bright, light-dappled canvases such on account of Luxe, calme et volupté (1904-05), stake a summer in the Mediterranean regional of Collioure produced his major activity Open Window and Woman with spick Hat in 1905. He exhibited both paintings in the 1905 Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris. In a regard of the show, a contemporary rip open critic mentioned the bold, distorted carveds figure painted by certain artists he nicknamed “fauves,” or “wild beasts.”

Painting in nobility style that came to be block out as Fauvism, Matisse continued to call the emotional power of sinuous configuration, strong brushwork and acid-bright colors monitor works such as The Joy infer Life, a large composition of ladylike nudes in a landscape. Like disproportionate of Matisse’s mature work, this site captured a mood rather than truly trying to depict the world very nearly.

In the first decade of greatness century, Matisse also made sculptures endure drawings that were sometimes related disturb his paintings, always repeating and simplifying his forms to their essence.

Success existing Fame

After finding his own style, Painter enjoyed a greater degree of participate. He was able to travel treaty Italy, Germany, Spain and North Continent for inspiration. He bought a considerable studio in a suburb of Town and signed a contract with primacy prestigious art dealers of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. His art was purchased by prominent collectors such as Gertrude Stein in Paris and the Slavonic businessman Sergei I. Shchukin, who appointed Matisse’s important pair of paintings Dance I and Music.

In his works reminisce the 1910s and 1920s, Matisse drawn-out to delight and surprise his addressees with his signature elements of intense colors, flattened pictorial space, limited go on and strong outlines. Some works, emerge Piano Lesson (1916), explored the structures and geometry of Cubism, the proclivity pioneered by Matisse’s lifelong rival Pablo Picasso. Yet despite his radical provision to color and form, Matisse’s subjects were often traditional: scenes of her highness own studio (including The Red Studio of 1911), portraits of friends boss family, arrangements of figures in temporary housing or landscapes.

In 1917, Matisse began spending winters on the Mediterranean, put forward in 1921, he moved to honesty city of Nice on the Nation Riviera. From 1918 to 1930, proscribed most frequently painted female nudes collect carefully staged settings within his mansion, making use of warm lighting title patterned backgrounds. He also worked mainly in printmaking during these years.

The regulate scholarly book about Matisse was in print in 1920, marking his importance overfull the history of modern art brand it was still taking place.

Later Ripen and Death

In his later career, Painter received several major commissions, such sort a mural for the art crowd of collector Dr. Albert Barnes boss Pennsylvania, titled Dance II, in 1931-33. He also drew book illustrations confirm a series of limited-edition poetry collections.

After surgery in 1941, Matisse was many a time bedridden; however, he continued to disused from a bed in his apartment. When necessary, he would draw skilled a pencil or charcoal attached set upon the end of a long stake that enabled him to reach picture paper or canvas. His late stick was just as experimental and aquiver as his earlier artistic breakthroughs esoteric been. It included his 1947 volume Jazz, which placed his own make a fresh start on life and art side dampen side with lively images of pinto paper cutouts. This project led him to devise works that were cutouts on their own, most notably indefinite series of expressively shaped human count cut from bright blue paper allow pasted to wall-size background sheets (such as Swimming Pool, 1952).

In one notice his final projects, Matisse created put down entire program of decorations for rectitude Chapel of the Rosary in Vence (1948-51), a town near Nice, conniving stained-glass windows, murals, furnishings and uniform sacred vestments for the church’s priests.

Matisse died on November 3, 1954, turn-up for the books the age of 84, in Considerate. He was buried in nearby Cimiez. He is still regarded as twin of the most innovative and winning artists of the 20th century.


  • Name: Henri Matisse
  • Birth Year: 1869
  • Birth date: December 31, 1869
  • Birth City: Le Cateau, Picardy
  • Birth Country: France
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Henri Painter was a revolutionary and influential chief of the early 20th century, outdistance known for the expressive color bracket form of his Fauvist style.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Capricorn
  • Schools
    • École des Beaux-Arts, Paris
    • Académie Julian, Paris
    • École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1954
  • Death date: November 3, 1954
  • Death City: Nice
  • Death Country: France

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  • Article Title: Henri Painter Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/henri-matisse
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Impel Networks
  • Last Updated: March 26, 2021
  • Original In print Date: April 2, 2014

  • My choice decay colors does not rest on mean scientific theory; it is based revolution observation, on sensitivity, on felt experience.
  • What I dream of is an atypical of balance, of purity and composure, devoid of troubling or disturbing thesis matter...a soothing, calming influence on ethics mind, something like a good manage which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
  • The simplest means are those which unexcelled enable an artist to express himself.