Matisse (Paperback)

Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

Taschen, publisher of superb art books, has excelled itself with this exquisite book on Henri Matisse. It is written with great understanding of his artistic struggles and achievements, and it has lavish reproductions of his paintings, sculpture, line drawings and his paper cut-outs which are pure curve and colour. Each of the 240 pages illustrates the sheer sensual joy of his work. As he himself said, 'Without passion there is no art', and he felt that his art of balance, purity and mastery was 'the joy of painting the beauty of the universe'. Matisse's passion for colour turned him into the reluctant leader of the Fauve school of painting. The human figure is what interested him the most, especially the curves of the female form, which, he said, 'makes it possible for me to express the almost religious feeling I have about life'. Although his work can't be easily divided into periods, the 11 chapters here deal in an illuminating way with the development of his dual attributes - his amazing sense of the rhythm of line, and his infallible feeling for the harmony of (sometimes surprising) colour. Only in his later years did he find that his paper cut-outs enabled him to draw directly in colour - a union of the two methods which became one. Earlier chapters in particular include smaller illustrations of works by other artists who were important to Matisse, Cezanne predominantly at first, but Ingres, Courbet and even Manet also influenced his ideas and inspired him. He was fond of contrasts within painting: the model and the window, interior and exterior, transparency and opacity. He was always seeking a harmony in the whole. Complete with a very useful chronology of the artist's life, a bibliography and a list of all his painting and sculptures, this is a truly magical book. (Kirkus UK)