Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist and was well known for his ability to use colour in an extraordinary way. He was a painter, printmaker and sculptor, but is known by just painter. He was regarded as one of the three faces that defined plastic art in the first few decades of the 20^th century. His use of fluid colour led him to develop his own style in the 20^th century.

This is a very famous piece of work by Matisse, and is called Dance.  At first I thought it was some happy celebration, as people are holding hands and spinning around. If you look at the person in the middle bottom, you can see they are falling. This leads me to believe this is not some happy celebration, and may be a ritual of some sort, as it looks like they are dragging her while they are standing fine upright. The message changes drastically the way you see it, which is why art is all about personal interpretation. The colours are quite neutral and don’t really stand out, as the blue and green are dark and don’t stand out. The skin colour stands out a lot against the blue and green, as it is lighter than them, and this is why you can only see the dancers. They are also naked, which is also the reason why they don’t lose the focus of the painting.

This was also created by Matisse and is a very simple collage. It was created when Matisse was too ill to paint anymore, and was confined to the bed. He was able to tear the paper, and told his assistant where to place it. Matisse said he was able to draw in colour, as usually he would draw then outline then colour it in, but with this he could paint in colour. This piece is very bright and is quite vivid with colour. Even though there is no depth to this image, the saturation of the colours is still very high.