Henri matisse biography books

The book is organised like a dictionary, comprising more than 1, entries, written by an extensive group of Matisse scholars. Despite its rich content, the format is small and compact. So far, the book has only been published in French. All you ever wanted to know about Rothko, from the artist's own writings to the most complete study of his famous Seagram Murals.

One thing that baffles me is that these paintings took enormous effort and time on occasion but when one looks at them it is hard to decide what part of the process was so strenuous when clearly the act of painting them didn't seem spectacularly loaded with technical challenges. I would understand that coming up with the perfect composition might take some trying but the author seems to accept readily that the act of painting itself took months at face value.

Picasso produced at dizzying speed with unwavering confidence surpassing in boldness anything that came his way. By contrast, Matisse seems to have been giving birth every time he grabbed a brush-at least from this account. Matisses's compositions are not particularly difficult even when his approach to painting was "something else" so what did take months?

As many artist biographies, this one pays no attention to technique, materials or work methods, my main complaint remains that it could have been a lot shorter if repetition of events and ideas hadn't been so pervasive. On the plus side, Matisse's everyday family life receives luscious attention and care. In that area, this biography is flawless.

Matisse appears as the centre of his family, devoted to his art above all and at the expense of all, including wife and children. Marguerite's ordeals were a shock to me and probably deserve their own book. One suspects that Matisse would have amounted to nothing if it hadn't been enabled by the wonderful women in his life who managed every little aspect of his affairs so he could paint in concentrated stupor.

Amelie in particular stands out as the one that placed all bets on him only to be sidetracked in the very end over the presence of Lydia Delectorskaya. Mark Gubarenko. Mark Walker. Spurling achieves a difficult task in writing a faithful biography of Matisse. He was so overwhelmingly obsessed and committed to being an artist, it crowds out other parts of his life.

What comes across is an uncompromising driven artist, who constantly was looking for new inspiration and mediums to express himself. He is a hard task master on all who come across him, including his family. But the person on whom he vents most of his challenge is on himself. One of the many interesting things you learn is the reception his works received on first showing.

People would openly ridicule his work. He was just ahead of his time. Lynne Harkes.

Henri matisse biography books

Tracing the artist's story through growing maturity and success, Matisse the Master unveils the intimate relationship between his life and his work. Spanning from to , this triumphant second volume in Spurling's essential biography captures the glory years of Henri Matisse. Hilary Spurling. His remark was published in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, on October 17, , and quickly became famous.

Woman with a Hat was at the core of the debate that gave rise to the name Fauvism. In the picture, naked ladies and men frolic, play music, and dance in a vibrantly colored countryside. Some commentators even predicted the death of French art. However, by the s, the painting had been recognized as a contemporary masterpiece. Matisse regarded it to be one of his most significant works.

Matisse resumed making art by cutting and painting sheets of paper by hand following his stomach cancer operation, and oversaw the fabrication of the lithographs until his death in Blue Nude IV, the first of the four nudes, required a notebook of research and two weeks of cutting and arranging before he was pleased with the finished product.

In the end, Matisse settled on his favorite stance for all four works: intertwined legs and an arm stretched behind the neck. Blue Nude II, the second in the series featured above , was finished in Matisse associated the color blue with distance and volume.