Cut-Outs

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Towards the end of his career, the elderly and ailing Matisse, unable to stand and use a paintbrush, developed the revolutionary technique of 'carving into color,' creating vibrant paper cut-outs. At nearly 80 years old, he faced dismissal from some critics who viewed his work as the folly of a senile artist. However, these gouaches decoupees represented a significant breakthrough in modern art, re-imagining the longstanding conflict between color and line. This fresh TASCHEN edition provides a comprehensive historical context for Matisse's cut-outs, tracing their origins from his 1930 trip to Tahiti to his final years in Nice. It features numerous photographs of Matisse, including rare color images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and filmmaker Murnau, alongside texts from Matisse, Picasso, publisher E. Teriade, and poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse's son-in-law, Georges Duthuit. The cut-outs, with their deceptive simplicity, achieved a sculptural quality and early minimalist abstraction that would influence generations of artists. Exuberant and grand in scale, these works stand as true pillars of 20th-century art, bold and innovative, just as they were during Matisse's lifetime.