Knowing Henri Matisse

GREEN STRIPE (MADAME MATISSE)

1905. Oil on canvas, 42.5 x 32.5 cm.

National Gallery of Dinamarca, Copenhague.

Matisse painted this portrait in 1905, using his wife, Amélie Parayre, as a model. It is a painting of great chromatic audacity, which breaks with the realistic representation of forms, light and perspective, subordinating everything to the expressive power of color.

Actually, Amélie was not like that, but rather Matisse saw her like that. As the title of the painting says, a green line crosses his wife's face from forehead to chin, and that line is perhaps the true protagonist of the work, as the artist interacts with the other colors as a harmonious whole.

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Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France.

1869 - Niza, France 1954,

"The artist does not reproduce what is outside him but rather expresses the world from his emotions, interprets, shows us his inner universe."

Hello! ... My name is Henri Matisse, have you heard anything from me? Surely yes, I am one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.

I was born in a small town in northern France called Le Cateau-Cambrésis, on December 31, 1869, yes yes, the last day of the year. My family was engaged in trade, specifically drugstore and seeds. My father wanted me to be a lawyer, so at 18 I went to Paris to study law while working as a clerk in the court of my town. I was not doing so bad, until I got appendicitis and I had to stay convalescent for two years at home, I always had health problems ... My mother gave me painting materials on that occasion and that was when I discovered that I wanted to be a painter, for me it had been like finding paradise. I still painted another year in bed until I recovered, then I announced my decision to leave law school and dedicate myself full time to painting. My father was very angry, he kept telling me that it was a tramp's trade and he would die of hunger ... He never imagined that I would become one of the richest and most appreciated artists in France!

At the age of 23, I entered L'École des Beaux-Arts, where I received classes in the workshop of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. Start very traditional by practicing drawing from life and make copies of the paintings that were in the Louvre Museum. I traveled a lot, initially to Corsica and the Côte d'Azur, I did a lot of landscapes from there ... Travel was always a great inspiration for my work.

In 1898, at the age of 29, I married Amélie Parayre, we had two children, Jean and Pierre, born in Toulouse close to my in-laws. I had previously had a daughter with one of my models years before so we just raised all three children wonderfully.

My early works were moderately successful, but it wasn't until 1905 that I became famous. That year the Autumn Salon was held, an artistic event where works from different disciplines were presented: exhibitions of books, music and, above all, art.

Together with André Derain and other artists, we presented a new artistic movement that expressed emotions through color.

This transgressive interpretation did not please everyone. Some critics called us ‘fauves’, which in French means “wild beasts” or “wild beasts”, because of how we used color in an unrealistic and conventional way. However, we liked the name, it was the birth of Fauvism.

I was fortunate to travel a lot, I could hardly do it, Traveling to exotic countries and learning about new cultures was a great source of inspiration.

London, Tangier, Spain, Morocco, Tahiti, Algeria ...

All my investigations of various cultures, of light, color and form, of my approach to Middle Eastern art you can see very clearly in many of my works.

Throughout my career I experimented with multiple techniques and materials: engravings, lithographs, ceramic pieces, bronze sculpture ...

Not even the First World War (1914-1919) and the Second World War (1939-1945) managed to alter the vitality of my paintings.

Around 1917, at the age of 48, I settled in Nice, and I never left there. I met Renoir, My style became more subtle. During this period I did some of my most famous works. In 1963 the Matisse Museum was opened in Nice, which brings together a part of my work.

I was already quite old when I got colon cancer in 1941, I was 72 years old, and I had a series of surgeries. I was already very fragile so I had to spend my days in a wheelchair, from where I managed to continue now with what I called "painting with scissors", because I couldn't stop creating, so I started the collage stage, Thus from the bed or the chair I could work and direct my assistants forming compositions with bright colors. I never stopped creating, until my death in 1954, at age 85.

My style inspired painters around the world and to this day it still influences artists from other creative disciplines: sculpture, architecture, design, fashion.