Biography of matisse
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Matisse threw himself into painting “like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”Photograph from Alamy
Henri Matisse, unlike the other greatest modern painter, Pablo Picasso, with whom he sits on a seesaw of esteem, hardly exists as a person in most people’s minds. One pictures a wary, bearded gent, owlish in glasses—perhaps with a touch of the pasha about him, from images of his last years in Vence, near Nice, in a house full of sumptuous fabrics, plants, freely flying birds, and comely young models. Many know that Matisse had something to do with the invention of Fauvism, and that he once declared, weirdly, that art should be like a good armchair. A few recall that, in , he inspired the coinage of the term “cubism,” in disparagement of a movement that would eclipse his leading influence on the Parisian avant-garde, and that he relaxed by playing the violin. Beyond such bits and pieces, there is the art, whose glory was maintained and renewed in many phases until the
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Henri Matisse (–)
The remarkable career of Henri Matisse, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, whose stylistic innovations (along with those of Pablo Picasso) fundamentally altered the course of modern art and affected the art of several generations of younger painters, spanned almost six and a half decades. His vast oeuvre encompassed painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic arts (as diverse as etchings, linocuts, lithographs, and aquatints), paper cutouts, and book illustration. His varied subjects comprised landscape, still life, portraiture, domestic and studio interiors, and particularly focused on the female figure.
Initially trained as a lawyer, Matisse developed an interest in art only at age twenty-one. In , he moved to Paris to study art and followed the traditional nineteenth-century academic path, first at the Académie Julian (winter –92, under the conservative William-Adolphe Bouguereau), and then at the École des Beaux-Arts (, under the Symbolis
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Henri Matisse - Biography
Henri Matisse, born to a grain merchant in the Picardy område of nordlig France, initially pursued a career in law and worked as a lag clerk. A pivotal moment in his life occurred at the age of 21 when a serious illness led him to discover a passion for painting during his convalescence.
In , Matisse abandoned his legal career and enrolled in art classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Influenced bygd impressionist and post-impressionist painters such as Pissarro, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Paul Signac, and J.M.W. Turner, Matisse experimented with various styles. Around , he developed his distinctive style, characterized bygd bold, vibrant colors and broad brush strokes.
The Master of Colors
After a exhibition at the Salon d'Automne, Matisse and André Derain's group were mockingly labeled Les Fauves, meaning The Wild Beasts. During –, Matisse created one of his masterpieces, The Joy of Life, which fryst vatten considered a landmark work of 20th