Matisse S Garden

One day, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) cut a small bird out of a piece of white paper. It was a simple shape, but he liked the way it looked and didn't want to throw it away, so he pinned it to the wall of his room. But the bird looked lonely all by itself, so he cut out more shapes to join it, and before he knew it, he had transformed his walls into larger-than-life gardens filled with brightly coloured plants and animals and shapes of all sizes. Featuring colourful cut-paper illustrations and Matisse's own cut-outs, Matisse's Garden is the inspiring story of how the artist's never-ending curiosity and continuous process of trying new things helped turn a small experiment into a radical new form of art. Children will see how Matisse used nothing but paper and scissors to create simple shapes like squares, leaves and birds, and experimented with scraps of leftover paper and new colour combinations to create lush gardens on his studio walls.

Invites young readers to touch twentieth-century paintings, including Matisse's "Goldfish," Grant Wood's "American Gothic," and Chagall's "Birthday." On board pages.

"Exhibition organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London."

Step into the colorful world of Henri Matisse and his magnificent paper cutouts in this biography by acclaimed picture book creator Jeanette Winter. In a small weaving town in France, a young boy named Henri-Emile Matisse drew pictures everywhere, and when he grew up, he moved to Paris and became a famous artist who created paintings that were adored around the world. But late in life a serious illness confined him to a wheelchair, and amazingly, it was from there that he created among his most beloved works—enormous and breathtaking paper cutouts. Based on the life of Henri Matisse, this moving and inspirational picture book biography includes a note from the author, dynamic quotes from Matisse himself, and an illuminating look at a little-known part of a great artist’s creative process.

Each story is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling -- about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings -- a trip to the hair dresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in color and creation. These stories are all about human beings: about how little we can know (or may care to know) about the people with whom we spend our lives, and how tragic the results of that ignorance or indifference can be.

This beautiful and fascinating volume follows Henri Matisse on his journeys into the South of France, where he discovered the light and color that saturate his work. Part biography, part travel guide, it explores the painter's private life, artistic evolution, and relationships with the places that inspired him. The book begins in Paris and then moves to the fashionable St. Tropez, the fishing village of Collioure, chic Nice, the medieval refuge of Vence, and luxurious Cimiez. In each location, the author visits the villas and studios where Matisse lived and worked, and explains how his art responded to the palette and ambiance of the local landscape.

Color superb black-and-white reproductions of 30 paintings by modern master: Blue Nude I, La Danse, Icarus, The Circus, The Sword Swallower, The Thousand and One Nights, The Moorish Café, many others. Captions.

Henri Matisse is one of the leading figures of modern art. His unparalleled cut-outs are among the most significant of any artist's late works. When ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he began to cut into painted paper with scissors as his primary technique to make maquettes for a number of commissions, from books and stained glass window designs to tapestries and ceramics. Taking the form of a 'studio diary', the catalogue re-examines the cut-outs in terms of the methods and materials that Matisse used, and looks at the tensions in the works between finish and process; and drawings and colour.