10 Henri Matisse Facts

The first major showcase in Africa of his art takes place at The Standard Bank Gallery from July 13 to September 17 in an exhibition titled Henri Matisse | Rhythm and Meaning.

• Henri Matisse – who today is known for his bright colours, strong outlines and flattened pictorial space – started off life as a lawyer. He began painting at the age of 21 while recuperating from acute appendicitis only to discover that he felt happier while sick and painting then when he was well and working.
• Matisse was frenemies with Pablo Picasso. In the beginning they did not like each other’s work. However, they both recognised the power each had to challenge and stimulate creativity within the other. They would often produce the same subjects and even sometimes works with the same titles.
• Matisse had a lifelong interest in African art and collected African art objects. He visited Morocco in 1911 where he set up a studio in Tangier. He introduced Picasso to African art in 1907. This had a profound effect on Picasso’s development of Cubism and irrevocably altered the course of European modern art.
• Matisse developed a technique he called “painting with scissors” when confined to a wheelchair during his later years.  After he could no longer stand for extended periods of time, the artist began creating works using a pair of scissors and paper. He used a long stick to assemble them on his walls until he was happy with the arrangement.
• Matisse loved jazz saying, “Jazz is rhythm and meaning” and “There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.” In 1947 he published a limited edition artist’s book containing prints of colourful cut paper collages, accompanied by his written thoughts and called it Jazz.
• Other well-known quotes include: “A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave”; “I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it” and “Creativity takes courage”.
• Matisse was one of the founders of the Fauvist movement. In French, the word ‘fauve’ refers to a wild beast, and comes from the critic Louis Vauxcelle’s disparaging comment on viewing an exhibition of works by Matisse and his circle in 1905, in which he commented that the work looked as if it had been produced by wild beasts.
• The biggest single collection of Matisse’s work, comprising more than 500 paintings, is in the Baltimore Museum of Art in the US and is the bequest of sisters Claribel and Etta Cone, who spent the early part of the 20^th Century collecting works directly from Matisse, Picasso and their contemporaries in Paris.
• Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite, was a member of the French Resistance during World War 2. She was captured, tortured and was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. However, she managed to escape from the train and survived.
• Many of Matisse’s most significant paintings, including La Danse, were collected by the Russian collector Sergei Schukin in the early twentieth-century. This collection is now split between the Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art.

Le Clown (The Clown) 1947.  First plate of the book Jazz.
Gouache stencil print on Arches paper. 42 x 65cm. Musée départemental Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis