"Blue Nude II," Henri Matisse, 1952.
Matisse (1869-1954) is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Modern Art. A printmaker and sculptor as well as a painter, he was a trailblazer for artists today.
Earlier in his career he was known as a Fauvist, a school of painting that featured bright, intense colors and bold brushstrokes. As the years went on he experimented more and more, creating work that broke with standards of Realism but was also fairly representational.
Late in his life, after surgery for abdominal cancer, he wheelchair-bound and sometimes bedridden. Unable to paint anymore, he had assistants paint sheets of paper with bright colors and then he would cut them up and assemble collages. They could be representational, like this or merely abstract patterns. Matisse came to refer to this time as his "second life," as he found working with cut-outs and collage immensely rewarding and a new direction for his art.
This is also interesting because it marks a turn from his earlier teachings, that the human body should not be broken up. But here, he's using negative space as part of the greater whole...and it works.
From the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
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