Author(s): Gilles Ed Neret

Art

Drawing with scissors A compendium of his revolutionary late-period work The reputation of Henri Matisse (1869 1954) as the most important artist of the modern era is rivaled only by Picasso who himself said, All things considered, there is only Matisse. Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for a longer period of time. In this late phase of his life he was almost 80 years of age he developed the technique of creating brightly colored paper cut-outs. These gouaches decoupees (gouache cut-outs) represented a revolution in modern art, yet their simplicity was dismissed by many critics as the folly of a senile old man. Later critics realized that Matisse had found a brilliant solution to the age-old conflict between line and color one that would profoundly influence generations of artists to come."