Confined to a wheelchair towards the end of his life, Henri Matisse reinvented himself. This new edition explores the cut-out audacities with which he created a new artistic medium. Discover the story through little-known photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and F. W. Murnau and texts by the surrealist writer Louis Aragon and Matisse himself.

Drawing with scissors

Matisse's revolutionary late work

At the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor and lithographer, Matisse, aged and ill, could no longer hold his brushes. At this stage of his life, in his late eighties, he developed the technique of cutting out brightly coloured paper figures. Although some critics of the time saw these gouaches decoupées as nothing more than the ravings of a senile old man, Matisse had revolutionised modern art by finding a brilliant solution to the classic conflict between line and colour.

This edition of the first volume of our award-winning original XXL book provides a comprehensive historical contextualisation of Matisse's cut-outs and analyses their origin, from the artist's trip to Tahiti in 1930 to his last years in Nice. It also includes many photographs of Matisse, including some little-known ones by Henri Cartier-Bress and the filmmaker F. W. Murnau, as well as a number of photographs of Matisse's work. W. Murnau, as well as texts by Matisse himself, the publisher E. Tériade, the poets, the poets, and the artist. Tériade, the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michauxy, Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse's son-in-law, Georges Duthuit.

The deceptive simplicity of the cut-outs contains both sculptural qualities and early principles of minimalist abstraction that would greatly influence later generations of artists. Exuberant, polychrome and of sometimes superlative dimensions, these works are true pillars of 20th century art, as daring and innovative for the viewer as they were in their day for Matisse's contemporaries.

About the editors

Gilles Néret (1933-2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum curator. He founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein gallery in Tokyo, edited the art magazines L'ŒilyConnaissance des Arts, and was awarded the élie Faure prize in 1981. The numerous books he wrote for TASCHEN includeDalí The Pictorial Work, MatisseyErotica Universalis.

Xavier-Gilles Néretes is professor of philosophy of art and design at the école Duperré in Paris and at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He studies the relationship between art, philosophy and poetry. His publications include works on Bernard Saby, Daisuke Ichiba, Pakito Bolino, Anne van der Linden and a theoretical essay on graphic fanzines. He lives and works in Paris.

Publisher: Taschen