The legacy of Henri Matisse to twentieth-century art is seductive bright colors and the poetry of the human figure

reduced to a mere essence of line and shape created with a few sheets of cut and pasted colored paper. This volume celebrates the life and work of this remarkable artist with 98 full-color reproductions and archival photographs.

Henri Matisse"s long life and career was marked by steady, industrious work and a constant seeking and reevaluation of his remarkable art, now detailed and illuminated in this beautifully illustrated volume His continued struggles with self-expression gave to the world, over some six decades, a wealth of new and original visions in color, line, and form. With the exception of Pablo Picasso, no other artist has so profoundly and single-handedly influenced the direction of modern art.

Matisse"s career as an artist was shaped by his delight in the visible world. The colors and forms of his environment presented a continual challenge that led him to constantly experiment with new styles.

He quickly moved from the dotted brushwork of Neo-Impressionism to the bold expressions of Fauvism--then left Fauvism behind for a monumen tal decorative style characterized by simplified color and design. He drew inspiration from ordinary human experiences such as music and dance for his great commissioned mural decorations. The objects in his studio took on pulsing life and vigor in his still lifes as he filled his compositions with patterns,arabesques, and bold colors. Matisse celebrated the curves of the female form repeatedly throughout his life, at times achieving a brilliantly expressive and lyrical line to convey both form and movement at other times distorting the forms of the body for their expressive potential.

In the final years of his life, working from his bed,Matisse produced giant cutouts of unparalleled color and expressiveness--as though being freed from the mechanics of painting somehow allowed him to transcend substance with works that are the essence of light, joy, and hope.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

YOUTH,EDUCATION,AND EXPERIMENTS IN STYLE

CHAPTER TWO

BREAKTHROUGH,PATRONS,TEACHING,AND TRAVEL

CHAPTER THREE

THE ALLURE OF THE EXOTIC

CHAPTER FOUR

ODALISQUES AND IDYLLS

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SPIRIT OF LIGHT

INDEX