Henri Matisse Information
HENRI EMILE BENOIT MATISSE
Born 1869 in Picardy region of Northern France – Died 1954 in Nice
He was originally studying to be a lawyer when he became seriously ill at the age of 21. During convalescence he started painting and soon discovered his fascination and love for art which was to become his life long passion.
Two years later in 1892 he gave up his career as a lawyer and enrolled in art classes
at the Ecole Des Beaux-
Matisse is accepted as one of the all time great painters internationally recognised for his use of daring, bright colours.
In 1941 Matisse had abdominal cancer surgery with such a debilitating effect that
he was no longer able to stand upright at his easel, and so he had to turn to another
form of artistic expression. He created paper cut-
Between 1950 and 1954 Matisse designed a series of extremely brightly coloured gouache paper cut outs, in late 1953 it was decided to do a run of lithographs of these works. Matisse personally directed and supervised the first pulls during 1954 in collaboration with the renowned lithographers Mourlot Freres of Paris. These are a selection of the original lithographs from the 1954 Edition after Matisse’s cut outs.
