Henri Matisse

Here are ten facts about Henri Matisse, the famous French artist.

• Henri Matisse was born on 31st December 1869.
• He trained as a lawyer, but decided to become a painter.
• In 1891 he studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, learning from the artists William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau.
• At the beginning of his career, Matisse focused on painting landscapes and still-lifes in a traditional style. Following a meeting with the Australian artist, John Peter Russell, Matisse’s style changed. He started to produce work influenced by the Impressionist movement and he also admired the work of Cezanne.
  
• Matisse’s style evolved and he began to use strong colors and lose some of the realistic qualities of Impressionism. He became part of the Fauves (wild beasts), and exhibited his work alongside Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Gustave Moreau.
• In 1906, Matisse met Pablo Picasso and they became good friends.
• Matisse started to create large scale cut paper collages. He called the technique ‘painting with scissors’.
• Henri’s daughter, Marguerite, was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. She was captured, tortured and was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Luckily, she managed to escape from the train.
• Matisse died of heart failure in 1954. He was 84.
• Matisse’s son, Pierre, opened a gallery in New York. He exhibited the work of many great modern artists (in addition to the work of his father), such as: Joan Miro, Alberto Giacommeti and Marc Chagall.

Icarus was a protagonist of a well-known Greek myth that was quite popular among European painters as a subject. The story goes that a young man named Icarus was obsessed with the idea of flying. Determined to raise to the skies and fulfill his dream he constructed beautiful wings made from wax. Happily he ascended, gliding through skies, going higher and higher. His father warned him again and again not to get too close to the sun, but Icarus discarded all warnings and one day headed straight up towards the bright light of the sun. The heat melted the wax and Icarus plunged to his death.

Here Matisse shows Icarus flailing in the deep blue sky, his body in free fall. It’s a deeply tragic moment of inevitable death, of destruction, of collapse of hopes and ambitions, yet Matisse creates an almost meditational composition. The bursts of the yellow sunlight against the rich blue of the sky are almost hypnotic. His Icarus with a bright red spot in place of a heart is mysterious and calm, free of anxiety or fear. This beautiful, bold color could be interpreted as Matisse’s way of depicting Icarus’ passion for flying! Towards the later part of his life, Matisse, almost blind and no longer able to paint using traditional means, resorted to “painting with scissors”. Jazz was a compilation of hundreds of paper cutouts (like Icarus). Images from his book entered popular culture seamlessly, and have been reproduced as posters and prints.