Henri Matisse: The Cut Outs

In her Introduction, curator Jodi Hauptman quotes the artist: "It is no longer the brush that slips and slides over the canvas, it is the scissors that cut into the paper and into the color. The conditions of the journey are 100 per cent different. The contour of the figure springs from the discovery of the scissors that give it the movement of circulating life. This tool doesn’t modulate, it doesn’t brush on, but it incises in, underline this well, because the criteria of observation will be different." Featured here are two 1951 cover maquettes for the exhibition catalog Henri Matisse.

With their economy of means and chromatic geometries, Matisse’s cut-outs are the apex of his "construction by means of color"

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Hbk, 9 x 10.5 in. / 302 pgs / 250 color.
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