Quick Facts
- NAME: Henri Matisse
- OCCUPATION: Painter, Sculptor
- BIRTH DATE: December 31, 1869
- DEATH DATE: November 03, 1954
- EDUCATION: Académie Julian, Paris, École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Le Cateau, Picardy, France
- PLACE OF DEATH: Nice, France
- Full Name: Henri Emile Benoît Matisse
- AKA: Henri Matisse
Best Known For
Henri Matisse was a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century, best known for the expressive color and form of his Fauvist style.
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Henri Matisse - Blue Nude (0:00)
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Henri Matisse - Blue Nude
Henri Matisse's "Blue Nude" debuted in 1907 and is one of the most pivotal and controversial works of his career.
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Play NowHenri Matisse. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 02:15, May 23, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564.
Henri Matisse. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564 [Accessed 23 May 2013].
"Henri Matisse." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 23 2013, 02:15 http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564.
"Henri Matisse," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564 [accessed May 23, 2013].
"Henri Matisse," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564 (accessed May 23, 2013).
Henri Matisse [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 23] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564.
Henri Matisse, http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564 (last visited May 23, 2013).
Henri Matisse. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/henri-matisse-9402564. Accessed May 23, 2013.
Synopsis
Henri Matisse was born December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau in northern France. Over a six-decade career he worked in all media, from painting to sculpture to printmaking. Although his subjects were traditional—nudes, figures in landscapes, portraits, interior views—his revolutionary use of brilliant color and exaggerated form to express emotion made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Quotes
"My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on sensitivity, on felt experience."
"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter...a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue."
"The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself."
Early Life and Training
Henri Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, and was raised in the small industrial town of Bohain-en-Vermandois in northern France. His family worked in the grain business. As a young man Matisse worked as a legal clerk and then studied for a law degree in Paris in 1887-89. Returning to a position in a law office in the town of Saint-Quentin, he began taking a drawing class in the mornings before he went to work. When he was 21, Matisse began painting while recuperating from an illness, and his vocation as an artist was confirmed.
In 1891 Matisse moved to Paris for artistic training. He took instruction from famous, older artists at well-known schools such as the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. These schools taught according to the “academic method,” which required working from live models and copying the works of Old Masters, but Matisse was also exposed to the recent Post-Impressionist work of Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh while living in Paris.
Matisse began to show his work in large group exhibitions in Paris in the mid-1890s, including the traditional Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work received some favorable attention. He traveled to London and to Corsica, and in 1898 he married Amélie Parayre, with whom he would have three children.
Breakthrough Period
By the turn of the 20th century, Matisse had come under the more progressive influence of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who painted in a “Pointillist” style with small dots of color rather than full brushstrokes. He stopped exhibiting at the official Salon and began submitting his art to the more progressive Salon des Indépendants in 1901. In 1904 he had his first one-man exhibition at the gallery of dealer Ambroise Vollard.
Matisse had a major creative breakthrough in the years 1904-05. A visit to Saint-Tropez in southern France inspired him to paint bright, light-dappled canvases such as Luxe, calme et volupté (1904-05), and a summer in the Mediterranean village of Collioure produced his major works Open Window and Woman with a Hat in 1905. He exhibited both paintings in the 1905 Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris. In a review of the show, a contemporary art critic mentioned the bold, distorted images painted by certain artists he nicknamed “fauves,” or “wild beasts.”
Painting in the style that came to be known as Fauvism, Matisse continued to emphasize the emotional power of sinuous lines, strong brushwork and acid-bright colors in works such as The Joy of Life, a large composition of female nudes in a landscape.
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