The Cutouts
He and his wife of 41 years separated in 1939. In 1941, he underwent surgery in which a colostomy was performed. Afterwards he started using a wheelchair, and until his death he was cared for by a Russian woman, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches découpés. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of this technique he called "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.
Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the Résistance during the war, was tortured (almost to death) in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. (Marguerite avoided further imprisonment by escaping from the Ravensbrück-bound train, which was halted during an Allied air strike; she survived in the woods until rescued by fellow resisters.)
Matisse's student Rudolf Levy was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.
In 1947 he published Jazz, a limited-edition book containing prints of colorful paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. In the 1940s he also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios in Paris.
Jazz 1947, artist's book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir (stencil) prints.
Matisse was much admired and repeatedly referred to by the Greek Nobelist poet Odysseas Elytis. Elytis was introduced to Matisse through their common friend Tériade, during the work on the Cutouts. Matisse had painted the wall of the dining room of Tériade's residence, the Villa Natacha in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, which Elytis also mentioned in his poems.
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Henri Matisse, cutouts gallery in Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz.
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The Knife Thrower, 1947, from Jazz, print from paper collage
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Beasts of the Sea, 1950, paper collage on canvas, collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
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Black Leaf on Green Background, 1952, gouache découpée, The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
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Blue Nude II, 1952, gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
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La Négresse, 1952/1953, Lithograph after a gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
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The Sorrows of the King, 1952, Gouache on paper and canvas, Pompidou Centre, Paris
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Le Bateau 1953, Gouache on cut paper, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City
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