School Encyclopedia. Famous Paintings by Henri Matisse Sculptures by Matisse

The most famous and scandalous works of the famous master of modern fine art.

The French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) worked in various areas of art, including sculpture, but he created his most famous works as an artist. Along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, he is considered one of the most influential figures in modern art, and his work has revolutionized the world of painting. An eminent colorist, Matisse is also known for his work in Fauvism, a movement in which he became a leading figure.

Creation date: 1937
This work is a portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya, who was a muse, and later a companion of Matisse. Lydia is depicted in an exotic Moroccan costume, surrounded by exotic colors and an abstract interior. This picture demonstrates the declarative nature of the author's style.

Creation date: 1905
Henri Matisse was the most prominent member of the short-lived but prominent art movement of the 20th century, Fauvism, which was characterized by a flamboyant expressionist and non-naturalistic method of using colors. A classic illustration of the work of this trend is the painting "Open Window", depicting the view from the artist's apartment in Collioure, on the south coast of France. The work is considered a landmark for early modernism.

Creation date: 1914
During a visit to Morocco, Matisse noticed that local residents, after using some intoxicating drugs, spend their time in silent contemplation of goldfish. Returning to Paris, he installed a bowl with such a fish in his workshop. These creatures appear in nine of the artist's paintings, but this one is probably the most famous. Matisse originally sketched a self-portrait, palette in hand, similar to Paul Cezanne. The fish and the palette signify a hidden connection with the work "Harlequin" by Picasso, interpreted as a self-portrait. Matisse and Picasso were close friends, but also eternal rivals.

Creation date: 1905
Divisionism was characteristic of the Neo-Impressionist style and is an approach in which colors are divided into dots, spots or strokes, which "blend" at a distance, making up a complete picture. For the first time, paintings using this method were created by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. Painting " ”is the most famous work of Matisse in neo-impressionism, but a year later the artist abandons this style and becomes a pioneer of Fauvism.

Creation date: 1905
Exhibited in 1905 at the Salon d'Automne (an exhibition in Paris), "The Woman in the Hat" was the center of attention. The portrait of Matisse's wife, Amelie Pareille, struck both viewers and critics due to the free manner of writing, incompleteness, brightness and unnaturalness in color schemes, becoming one of the painter's most famous masterpieces.

Creation date: 1905
The author himself considered this painting "Bathers" one of the most important in his career and worked on it for eight years, finalizing the details, reflecting his interest in cubism. The restrained color palette and strict forms strikingly distinguish the painting from most other works of Matisse.

Creation date: 1907
While working on this sculpture, Matisse accidentally destroyed the blank, and its fragments inspired the master to create the most controversial work of his career. First presented at the Salon des Indépendants, the sculpture "Blue Nude" shocked the French public, and later made a sensation in other countries. This work inspired Pablo Picasso's equally controversial Les Maidens of Avignon.

red studio

Creation date: 1907
The picture depicts the workshop of Matisse: paintings, sculptures, dishes randomly scattered throughout the studio. The walls and floor are evenly covered with red paint. " red studio”is considered a key work in art history, and in 2004, according to a survey of experts, ranked fifth out of 500 in the list of the most influential works of contemporary art.

Creation date: 1906
A breakthrough work for Matisse depicts several nude women and men against a background filled with bright colors. Dancing figures can be seen in the distance. An example of work in the style of Fauvism, like many other paintings by the author, caused a number of indignations during the days of the show.

Creation date: 1910
Exuding a "primitive" energy, the painting was deliberately painted in a somewhat childish way. Depicting five dancing figures, the work is considered a key point in the development of modern painting and the most famous work of Henri Matisse.

The artist's appeal to the topic of Christianity was influenced by the personal tragedy of Matisse: in 1944, his wife and daughter got into the Gestapo for participating in the French resistance. After being tortured, they were placed in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. They had to go through terrible humiliation for women. Matisse's wife did not survive, and her daughter was left crippled after her release.

updated: December 1, 2017 by: Gleb

Henri Matisse a brief biography and interesting facts from the life of the French painter, graphic artist and sculptor are set out in this article.

Henri Matisse short biography

Henri-Emile Benoit Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in the city of Le Cateau. He received knowledge in many institutions - first he studied in Paris from 1891 at the Julian Academy, then in 1893 at the School of Decorative Arts and, finally, at the School of Fine Arts in the period 1895-1899.

At first he, like many students of the painter of that period, was engaged in copying the works of old Dutch and French masters. In his work, he experienced a huge influence of neo-impressionism (inspired by the works of Signac), the art of the Arab East, Gauguin and ancient Russian icon painting.

In the period from 1905 to 1907, Henri led a new artistic direction - Fauvism. At the beginning of the 20th century, the influence of cubism can be traced in the artist's works, but since the 1920s they have been distinguished by their color diversity, immediacy and softness of writing. Beginning in the 1930s, Matisse combined the decorativeness of Fauvism with a clear analytical construction of composition and a subtly nuanced color system.

In the second half of the 20th century, Matisse found his own style in art - a laconic drawing, a contrasting combination of color zones or an advantage on the canvas of shades of the main one tone, as well as tones that do not hide the texture of the canvas. It can be clearly seen in his panels "Music", "Artist's Studio" and "Dance".

The following motifs predominate in his work - idyllic scenes, dance, patterns of fabrics and carpets, figurines, vases and fruits ("Red Fish" and "Still Life with a Shell"). A distinctive feature of Matisse is the operation of the line. He does it quite thinly, intermittently, sometimes the line is long, round, cutting through a black or white background (“Themes and Variations”, “Poems”, “Pasiphae”, “Poems about Love”).

His last work was the stained glass windows of the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary near Nice in 1953. The artist died November 3, 1954.

Henri Matisse interesting facts

• When Matisse was 20 years old, he had surgery to remove an appendix. This event contributed to the fact that Henri began to be interested in painting. When he was lying in the ward, his mother brought paints to her son so that he would not be bored. After Matisse recovered, he could no longer live without painting.
• Matisse's father wanted his son to become a lawyer. Henri even studied in Paris at the Faculty of Law and worked at one time as a clerk. But the desire to draw won everything in him.
• Was friends with. They followed each other's works for a long time, gave them the same names.
• On January 10, 1898, Henri Matisse married Amélie Pareille, who bore him sons Jean-Gerard (1899-1976) and Pierre (1900-1989). His illegitimate daughter Margarita was also taken into the family. His wife and daughter were the artist's favorite models.
• The last years of his life the artist Matisse spent in a wheelchair and bed. When he could not stand for a long time, he began to create masterpieces using colored paper and scissors. When his desire to draw overcame, he tied a pencil to a long stick and drew in bed.
• Matisse loved to travel - he visited Germany, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, the Russian Empire, was in Tahiti and came to America. He exhibited very often - in Berlin, New York, Nice, St. Petersburg, Paris, Madrid.
• Matisse had great vision problems and therefore he was attracted to geometric, simplified, almost schematic forms of art.

Henri Matisse - an outstanding French artist, leader of the Fauvist movement - is known for his masterful transmission in the color of exquisite emotions and feelings. The world of Matisse is a world of dances and pastorals, beautiful vases, juicy fruits, greenhouse plants, carpets and colorful fabrics, bronze figurines and endless landscapes. His style is distinguished by the flexibility of lines, sometimes intermittent, sometimes rounded, conveying a variety of silhouettes and shapes, moods and motifs. Refined artistic means, color harmonies, combining bright contrasting harmonies, seem to call the contemplator of these works to enjoy the sensual beauty of the world.

Matisse's painting is said to be musical. The artist's art was often given definitions of "secular" and "salon", seeing in the festivity and elegance of his paintings a direct impact of the tastes of wealthy patrons. Reproached for being isolated from reality, decadence, misunderstanding of contemporary problems. Indeed, with rare exceptions, you will not see nondescript everyday motifs in his paintings. Henri tried to capture something completely different: well-dressed women in a beautiful elegant setting, lush bouquets of flowers, bright carpets.

Henri Matisse Dance

The future artist came to the world, which he would later sing with such love with the help of a brush and paints, just before the onset of the New Year - December 31, 1869 in Cato-Cambresy, in northern France. The father wanted his son to get on his feet as soon as possible, he saw in him a lawyer, a wealthy person, but his desires remained a dream. True, after graduating from the Lyceum Saint-Quentin, Matisse still had to study law in Paris. For the first time he tried his hand at painting while in the hospital, where he ended up with appendicitis. There was a lot of free time, Henri made a drawing, another one and ... the work fascinated him. At the age of 20, he began studying at the art school Ventin de la Tour, and in 1891 he went to Paris, where he entered the École des Beaux-Arts. Then, against the will of his father, Matisse left the law and fully settled in Paris, enrolling in the Julian Academy and taking lessons from the master of French painting, Gustave Moreau.

A mystic and symbolist, Moreau predicted a great future for the novice artist, especially appreciating his innovative techniques in unexpected color combinations. Painting takes time and money. The family is growing: at the turn of two centuries, the artist's sons are born - Jean and Pierre. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Matisse's marriage was extremely happy: Amelie Matisse, devoted to the artist, worked hard so that her husband could only engage in creativity. This beautiful woman is depicted on many canvases of the master; the most famous works are “Woman in a Hat” and “Portrait of a Wife”. Amelie did everything possible to make Henri travel more, see the world, absorb its colors. Together, the couple go to Algeria, where Matisse gets acquainted with the art of the East, which had a great influence on him. Hence, in his work - the predominance of color over form, variegation and patterning, stylization in the development of objects.

The search for a direct transmission of sensations with the help of intense color, a simplified drawing and a planar image was reflected in the works presented at the Fauvist exhibition at the Paris Autumn Salon of 1905. At this time, Matisse discovers the sculpture of the peoples of Africa, is interested in classical Japanese woodcuts and decorative Arabic art.

In 1908, Russian collector Sergei Shchukin commissioned three decorative panels from the artist for his own home in Moscow. The work "Dance" (1910) presents an ecstatic dance, inspired by the impressions of the Russian seasons of Sergei Diaghilev, the performances of Isadora Aunkan and Greek vase painting. In "Music" figures of artists playing various instruments are given. The third panel - "Bathing, or Meditation" - remained only in outline. The paintings from the Shchukin collection, “cut off” by the war from the rest of the world, were confiscated by the state after the revolution, lay locked up in Soviet basements throughout the middle of the 20th century and saw the light only after the death of Stalin (and Matisse himself).

It cannot be said that the artistic beau monde accepted the work of Matisse unambiguously positively. For example, Pablo Picasso did not perceive the French painter at all and saw him as his rival. Igor Stravinsky recalls: “What is Matisse? Pablo liked to repeat. “A balcony with a bright flower pot on it.”

Unlike Picasso, Matisse had to face the opposition of his father, who was ashamed all his life that his son decided to become an artist. For many years Matisse lived in poverty. He was about forty when he was finally able to provide for his family on his own. Henri sought in the art of calm and stability, which life could not give him; Pablo, on the contrary, shook the foundations of the world.

When they met in 1906, Picasso was 25 years old, he had just arrived from Spain, he barely spoke French, and practically no one in Paris knew him. 3b-year-old Matisse was already recognized as a first-class artist at that time. The first painting that Matisse presented to Picasso in 1907 was a portrait of Henri's daughter, Marguerite. Picasso hung the work in his studio and invited his friends to use it as a target for playing "darts".

Matisse was strongly influenced by Islamic art, presented at an exhibition in Munich in 1911. Two winters spent by the artist in Morocco (1912 and 1913) further enriched his knowledge of oriental motifs, and a long life on the Riviera contributed to the development of a bright palette. Unlike the masters of cubism, Matisse's work was not speculative, it was based on a scrupulous study of nature and the laws of painting. All these canvases depicting female figures, still lifes and landscapes are the result of a long study of natural forms. We can say that Matisse managed to harmoniously express the immediate emotional sensation of reality in the most rigorous artistic form. An excellent draftsman, he was par excellence a colorist, achieving the effect of coordinating the sound of several intense colors. For example, in the painting “Luxury, Peace and Voluptuousness”, the Art Nouveau style is combined with a dotted, typical for pointillism, style of writing. In the future, color energy increases, there is an interest in expression (Matisse's favorite word), colorful halos, coloristic elaboration within a pictorial composition.

The color effect of Matisse's paintings on the viewer is incredible; the colors call and scream like loud fanfares. Color contrasts are sharply highlighted and emphasized. Here is what the artist himself says: “In my painting “Music”, the sky is written in beautiful blue, the bluest of blues, the plane is painted with a color so saturated that blue is fully manifested, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200babsolute blue; pure greenery was taken for trees, and sonorous vermilion for human bodies. For expression depends on the color surface covered by the viewer as a whole.

In the works of Matisse, color prevails over the drawing so much that one can say: it is he, the color, who is the true hero of the content of the paintings. Such a creative method was characteristic not only of Matisse, but of Fauvism as a whole. One critic wrote of the Fauvists: "They threw a can of paint in the face of the public." Matisse, in one of his essays, retorts: "The colors in the picture should excite the senses to the very depths, no matter what the critics say." No wonder Guillaume Apollinaire exclaimed: “If the work of Matisse needed comparison, one should take an orange. Matisse is a fruit of dazzling color.

Henri Matisse: matisse46

Henri Matisse: Les voiliers

Remarkable is the accuracy with which he builds a composition on canvas. Matisse captures the very axis of movement, giving the drawing wholeness and regularity. His sketches are so sharp, dynamic, lapidary and at the same time plastic that they cannot be confused with the work of other draftsmen - they are immediately recognizable!

French Art Nouveau artists were not indifferent to dance. Graceful ballerinas Degas, cabaret prima Toulouse-Lautrec - different hypostases of the dance theme that has come into fashion. Henri Matisse was no exception. And although the images of Matisse are alien to realism, and his decorative canvases have little in common with the reliable depiction of ballerinas on pointe shoes, the theme of dance invariably arises at turning points in his creative path.

Henri Matisse: Matisse Icarus (Icare), 1943-1944, From Jazz

Henri Matisse: Matisse Music, 1910, oil on canvas, The Hermitage at St. Pet

The panel "Parisian dance" was conceived by Matisse in his declining years. Nevertheless, the work is considered one of the most daring and innovative. Especially for this order, the author invented and developed an original technique - decoupage (translated from French - "cutting"). Like a giant puzzle, the picture was assembled from separate fragments. From the sheets, previously painted with gouache, the maestro cut out figures and pieces of the background with scissors with his own hands, then, according to the drawing marked with charcoal, he attached them to the base with pins ... The "Parisian dance" is known in three versions. The earliest, unfinished version is essentially a preparatory study. With the second, almost completed work, an unfortunate story came out: Matisse made a mistake in the size of the room, and the entire canvas had to be rewritten again. The final version was approved by the client and successfully departed overseas. And the previous, “defective”, artist managed to finish, in 1936 he gave up the work for a modest fee to the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Today, the "Parisian Dance" is rightly considered the pearl of the collection of this museum - it is no coincidence that a special hall was built to exhibit the giant canvas. Another interesting detail: in the process of working on the Parisian Dance, Henri Matisse had to visit Moscow, where, along with the poet Valery Bryusov and the artist Valentin Serov, who discovered the beauty of Russian icons for Matisse, from which the French painter was delighted, he met Lydia Aelektorskaya. This simple Russian girl was destined to go down in history - she became a secretary, then an indispensable assistant, and then - the artist's closest friend and last muse. In October 1933, Lydia Lelectorskaya moved into Matisse's house and stayed there for almost 22 years.

About his impression of Russia, Matisse wrote: “Yesterday I saw a collection of old icons. This is true great art. I am in love with their touching simplicity, which is closer and dearer to me than Fra Angelico's paintings. In these icons, like a mystical flower, the soul of the artists is revealed. And we need to learn from them the understanding of art.”

The First World War, which left a deep mark on the soul of Matisse, changed his artistic style. The coloring of the paintings becomes gloomy, and the drawing becomes almost schematic. Since 1918, the artist has been living in Nice almost without a break, occasionally visiting Paris. Joyful, bright colors do not return to his painting soon ... In numerous compositions of this period, among which the most famous are "Persian Dress", "Music" (1939), "Romanian Blouse" (1940), the artist reaffirms the principles of "pure painting ". Written in careless strokes, these paintings created a joyful but deceptive impression - as if they were painted easily, the first time, as a result of a happy and careless inspiration. But in fact, each of the master's creations is the result of painstaking searches, hard work, and enormous moral and physical stress. Not distinguished by good health, suffering from insomnia, Matisse denied himself many pleasures in order to maintain the ability to work. Creating a picture, he forgot about everything in the world.

Henri Matisse: Matisse Jazz- The Toboggan, 1943, paper cut-outs

The artist continues to create even in the most difficult time for him. Since 1941, he has been seriously ill, his wife and daughter were arrested by the Gestapo for participating in the Resistance movement, Matisse does not know anything about their fate for a long time. In recent years, Henri works more as an illustrator, is fond of collages. With what delight he wrote out the patterns of oriental carpets, how carefully he achieved exact, harmonious color ratios! Gorgeous, full of mysterious inner light and his still lifes, portraits of the later period. This is no longer an intimate painting, it acquires a cosmic sound. Forced to give up oil work, unable to hold a brush and palette in his hands, the artist developed a technique for composing an image from scraps of colored paper. In 1948-53, commissioned by the Dominican Order, Matisse worked on the construction and decoration of the Rosary Chapel in Vence. Above the ceramic roof depicting the sky with clouds, an openwork cross hovers; above the entrance to the chapel is a ceramic panel depicting St. Dominic and Virgin Mary. Other panels, made according to the sketches of the master, are placed in the interior; the artist is extremely stingy with details, restless black lines dramatically tell of the Last Judgment (western wall of the chapel); next to the altar is an image of Dominic himself. This last work of Matisse, to which he attached great importance - a synthesis of many previous searches - worthily completed his artistic path. However, Matisse painted to the last, even at night, even after a heart attack, the day before his death, November 3, 1954, he asked for a pencil and made three portrait sketches.

The artist, fortunately, had a long and intense creative life - in a world full of catastrophes, technical, scientific and social revolutions. This world was deafening, it changed with a truly explosive speed, and Matisse overturned all the usual ideas, piled up ruins, multiplied discoveries, searched for new forms of being in art. Searched and found!

Henri Matisse: Odalisque in red bloomers)