Henri Matisse"If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone."

Outline

Why Henri Matisse?

The biographic facts of Henri Matisse.

What did he devote his life to?

How did his career develop?

In which way is he connected with the region of Provence?

Why Henri Matisse?Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was a french artist, who represented, along with the other famous artists, the French culture.

He was a printmaker, sculptor, but is known mainly as a painter. His works are original and are referred to the Modern Art which is interesting to explore.

Facts of biographyHenri Matisse was born in 1869 in a small French town.

His parents were hard-workers and well-off.

Having finished lycée, he went to Paris to study law. He also worked at a law office.

The deal of his lifeMatisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life.”

Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions.

Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. But his drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father.

How did his career develop?Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to

Paris to study art at the Académie Julian, but left one year later.

He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted.

Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy.

Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art.

In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review.

Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things” and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity,” as he himself put it.

In his painting, he disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color.

Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success.

Matisse combined pointillist color and Cezanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism – a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes.

When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal.

The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse’s “Woman with a hat”, a portrait of his wife, Madame Matisse.

From 1906 to 1917 he lived in Paris. Many of his finest works were written during this period.

Moving to Nice

Matisse moved to Nice in 1917 to distance himself from wartime activity, where bright, warm colors showed him "simpler venues which won’t stifle the spirit."

His spirit became loyal to the "silver clarity of light" in Nice, and he returned to Paris only for a few months each summer.

The years 1917–30 are known as his early Nice period, when his principal subject remained the female figure or an odalisque. These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns.

In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with cancer, and then he lived through a risky operation.

“A second life”, was what he called the last fourteen years of his life. Following an operation he found renewed  and unexpected energies. This new lease of life led to an extraordinary burst of expression, the culmination of half a century of work.

In 1951, Matisse completed a monumental four-year project of designing the interior, the glass windows and the decorations of the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence.

Matisse’s prestige was such that he could largely financed the project himself and after it was completed,  the chapel opened in 1951 in a ceremony led by the Archbishop of Nice.

Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of eighty-four, on November 3, 1954 in Nice.

Meaning to the regionThe artist lived in Nice during 37 years of his life. There, he created a great number of masterpieces. He also invested money into cultural development of the region.

Nowadays, there’s a Museum of talented Henri Matisse, where there’re not only his paintings, but also his personal things.