Henri Matisse - Master of Classical Modernity

There are artists who started their work in the penultimate century and who are still said to have a noticeable influence on today's art - for students who deal with an art area for the first time. One of them is Henri Matisse , who born in France in 1869 and who found art in detours:

He was able to deal with the first life planning (the takeover of the parental seed action), which was carried out by studying law, which also led him to Paris .

Incidentally, he already visited drawing courses when he became a long bedridden through a blind intestine operation, he also tried in painting and then gave up his still young legal career in 1891 to prepare for the entrance exam at the Parisian École des Beaux-Art . Which he only existed in 1895, with his friend Albert Marquet Matisse was now a student of Gustave Moreau, who was concerned with the just emerging symbolism against traditional realism.

Matisse also got to know the painting style of the impressionists, copied classics in the Louvre, exhibited his first five paintings in the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Art and was introduced to the great masters of the time like Vincent van Gogh . His painting style experienced a first, free and modern formation under these influences.

Matisse married in 1898, and two sons quickly emerged from the marriage, and Matisse also consumed his four -year -old daughter born by one of his models. He studied gymnast and left the École des Beaux Arts when Moreau died and the Fernand Cormon, who was committed to the traditional style, became the successor.

First he sniffed in the private competition, the Académie Julian, then preferred to take courses with a symbolist (Eugéne Carrière, friend of Auguste Rodin), painted outdoors and also visited courses for sculpture .

Fascinated by his expression, he made a painting by Paul Cézanne, “The Three Bathers” , which was supposed to influence his thinking and creating for almost four decades.

However, no income did not result from this irrepressible will to learn, the modist business of his wife alone financed all the expenses for Matisse 'training, the four children and the expensive life in Paris, which soon led the family into a severe financial crisis.

Matisse now had to take on work as a decorative painter, which exhausted him in such a way that he got into an artistic crisis. But he also learned in financial terms and then tried for the first time for art collectors and exhibition options: in 1902 he was able to take part in a joint exhibition, the first individual exhibition followed in 1904 .

That interrupted his efforts to find style , he spent the summer of 1905 painting in a fishing village on the Mediterranean, and during this time he found a style in collaboration with André Derain, which later became famous as a “fauvism” . A critic shaped this name when he described the artists Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck when their first exhibition was assessed in the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905.

The focus of this criticism was Matisse 'painting “woman with hat” , this art scandal drove the market value of his pictures considerably. The small fauvist group dissolved again in 1907, but now Matisse had exhibited other critically recorded works, Gertrude Stein and Brother Leo won as a permanent sponsor and made the first gang of his lifelong friendship with Picasso .

Matisse also supported American friends of the Stein's, he was able to found a private painting school in Paris in 1908, where he taught around 100 domestic and foreign students in a comprehensive, non-commercial way until 1911, including an unusually large number of women at that time.

Matisse now conquered the world through trips and exhibitions, continued to learn and processed many new impressions: in 1906 he discovered oriental ceramic and carpet art , in 1908 he met the “bridge” artists in Germany, and in the same year his first exhibition place in the USA.

In 1909 he received a large job of the Russian patron Sergei Schtschukin and was now able to buy a house where he also built a studio on the property (in IsSy-les-moulineaux near Paris).

His works took part in an exhibition in London in 1910, in 1912 his sculptures were exhibited in New York, in 1913 some of his pictures took part in the important exhibition in New York , the Armory Show . Matisse itself was in Seville and Tanger and Berlin from 1910 to 1914 and finally fled to the Spanish border to Colliore before the First World War.

There, his tendency to geometric simplification through contact with the Cubist Juan Gris should be reinforced. The Matisse suffering from bronchitis in the south remained on medical advice, from 1917 he settled in Nice, but spent working in his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux every summer.

In 1918, the first exhibition together with Picasso already anticipated a little of the fame, which two painters should later be granted by assigning their leading roles in contemporary art. Matisse now also designed costumes and stage sets (in 1920 for Djagilew's ballet “Le Chant du Rossignol”), worked again on sculptures, exhibited in New York in 1927 and traveled a lot to Italy, 1930 in 1930, via San Francisco and New York.

On the way back from this trip, he received a huge mission in the United States, which employed him until 1932; It is said to be related to the 22-year-old assistant Lydia Delectorskaya, who was at his side at this work and also sitting model that his wife Amélie left marriage after three decades.

After the divorce and the subsequent illness followed a time of the most diverse work, Matisse made tapestries and book illustrations , e.g. B. for James Joyce 'Ulysses and Stéphane Mallarmés Poésie, exhibited in the Thannhauser gallery in Berlin in 1930 and had the first major American solo exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in November 1931.

The following years brought further ballet decorations and costumes and other illustrations, from 1943 Matisse worked in a southern French country villa (near Vence, northwest of Nice) on the composition of his 1947 book Jazz, one of the most important artist books of the 20th century.

In 1945 he traveled to Paris to his first retrospective and exhibited together with Picasso in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in 1946 Picasso visited him for the first time in Vene, in 1947 Matisse began designs for the rosary chapel in Vence, which was employed for years, he returned to Nice in 1948.

In 1951 Matisse received the first prize for painting at the Biennale in Venice, in 1952 the Musée Henri Matisse opened in his hometown Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in 1963 his paper découpés were exhibited in Paris and his sculptures in London. When Matisse died of a heart attack in Nice in 1954, he was also in the middle of work, at a glass window for a church that he on behalf of the Rockefeller family in memory of an ancestor.

At that time, Matisse, who, in addition to Picasso, was often the most important artist of classical modernity shortly before the age of 85. He has completed a busy life in which he saw an incredible amount and apparently did not negotiate any suggestion to find stylistic innovations in his work, which in turn modern art .

Further information on Henri Matisse, as well as his works and exhibitions (including the exhibition dates) can be found here:

Henri Matisse on art stages