The Art of Matisse

Fülszöveg

Matisse has probably had more influence on the course of modern art than even Picasso and yet he became a painter almost by accident. Born in northern Francé in 1869, he was set for a legal career until he discovered painting while recuperating from an illness in his early twenties and showed sufficient promise to be taken on as a pupil by Gustave Moreau. In the early 1900s Matisse emerged as one of the Fauves, the group of Parisian painters famous for their bold nonnaturalistic use of colour and their free brushwork. Unlike many of his contemporaries he eschewed depressing subject matter, continuing to work in the Tine art' tradition and taking as his subjects beautiful women, still-lifes and interiors. Always decorative, his paintings are a serene expression of his joy in living and his delight in the world around him, particularly that of the Mediterranean, Morocco and Tahiti, for like Gauguin he was a northerner who became enraptured by the south. Matisse is 'southern' in the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Matisse has probably had more influence on the course of modern art than even Picasso and yet he became a painter almost by accident. Born in northern Francé in 1869, he was set for a legal career until he discovered painting while recuperating from an illness in his early twenties and showed sufficient promise to be taken on as a pupil by Gustave Moreau. In the early 1900s Matisse emerged as one of the Fauves, the group of Parisian painters famous for their bold nonnaturalistic use of colour and their free brushwork. Unlike many of his contemporaries he eschewed depressing subject matter, continuing to work in the Tine art' tradition and taking as his subjects beautiful women, still-lifes and interiors. Always decorative, his paintings are a serene expression of his joy in living and his delight in the world around him, particularly that of the Mediterranean, Morocco and Tahiti, for like Gauguin he was a northerner who became enraptured by the south. Matisse is 'southern' in the vividness of his colours, and his innovations in the use of these, allied to a strong sense of pattern, enable his paintings, the later ones in particular, to be appreci^ted in purely abstract terms. 'It is through colour that I am', he declared, and it is through colour above all that his work achieves the power and originality which have secured his place among the masters. Vissza