Henri Matisse Book Shop

The extraordinary significance of the painter and sculptor Henri Matisse in the history of modern art, but also his influence, was no less decisive than that of his main rival, PabloPicasso. In fact, Matisse’s stylistic liberation actually goes one step further in the pursuit of his own personal goal — the perfect synthesis of line and color — by which he sought revolutionary approaches to the great tradition of French painting by drawing upon its classical aspects. For those who wish to know more about this lodestar of modern art and follow the adventurous path of his creative career, this publication is surely the most comprehensive and informative source available. Lavishly illustrated, its authoritative commentaries trace the artist’s search for balance, purityand serenity, from the chromatic brilliance of his Fauve period, through his travels, the Orient, geometric synthesis (it was he who introduced Picasso to African art by givinghim his first mask), and the odalisques to the final triumph when, at the age of eighty, he invented his gouache cut-outs that culminated in his illustrations for Jazz and allowed him to achieve his goal of sculpting in paint just as a sculptor works in stone. Matisse is widely acknowledged as an artist whose canvases are extremely difficult to reproduce in print. With this in mind, each work presented here has been painstakingly compared with the respective original, in close collaboration with the artist’s grandson, Claude Duthuit. The bard of color deserves no less.

Henri Matisse created a series of stunning paper cutouts, arranged them into compositions, and added a text in his own handwriting to produce a unique work of art that has been referred to as "the visual counterpart of jazz music".

This volume reproduces the complete composition of Jazz, as originally published in 1947. The accompanying text retraces the fascinating story of the work's background, the significance of the colors and images, and looks at the importance of Matisse's handwritten pages as a counterpoint to the cut-outs.

This exquisite volume opens the doors of Matisse's atelier to reveal the artist's most intimate work.

For Henri Matisse, drawing was an exercise as personal as it was essential to his art. Reproduced on elegant stock these black and white and gently colored sketches allow the viewer to appreciate the quality of Matisse's lines, their confidence and ease, as well as the intense relationship between artist and model. Matisse's joie de vivre, his love of beauty, and his fascina

In 1936, French publisher Christian Zervos released a collection of drawings by Henri Matisse as part of his Cahiers d'Art series. Along with 39 stunning Matisse drawings, the book included a preface by Zervos and a poem by Tristan Tzara dedicated to the artist. The drawings, mostly of women—nudes, portraits, interior scenes—express an extraordinary sensuality.

This reprint, a facsimile edition faithful to the original, features translations by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and scholar Richard Howard. The beauty of Matisse's simple drawings, as powerful today as in 1936, remains accessible to art lovers and a general audience alike. 39 full-page facsimile reproductions.

"Matisse was born in 1869 in northern France and grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, near the Belgian border, on the drab, cold, wet beet fields of French Flanders. The same area, culturally and geographically speaking, had produced Vincent van Gogh sixteen years before." Thus begins the first full biography of an artist who, more than any other, is associated with Mediterranean heat, brilliant color and light, and languid, luxurious interiors. As author Hilary Spurling points out, an open window is one of Matisse's frequent motifs. Given the climate of his youth, that image speaks more of escape than of the sea air of the French Riviera.

If all biographers wrote with Spurling's warmth, empathy, and intelligence, no one would likely want to read any other kind of book. The Unknown Matisse is thoroughly researched, with pages devoted to minutiae that Spurling imparts with wit and style, making every nuance of Matisse's early development fascinating. She tells too the story of Matisse's family life (Mme. Matisse risked her respectable reputation by adopting Henri's first, illegitimate daughter), his brilliant ideas about art, and the years it took for his paintings to find their rightful audience. It was her intention finally to give as much weight to Matisse's life as has been given to his work, but in the process of examining the man she sheds new light on the art as well.

--Peggy Moorman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The first volume of Spurling's magisterial biography, The Unknown Matisse, covered his evolution into a painter. This second volume opens with his adjusting to the status—albeit controversial—of master. At 40, Matisse found himself with both the freedom to paint and the burden of a reputation that drew enemies, disciples and skeptics into his working life. This shift from obscurity to notoriety had less impact on Matisse's work than on his personal relationships, especially his marriage to the single-minded Amélie, a bond that became saturated, for better and worse, with his achievements. Matisse's other relationships—with his daughter, Marguerite, his son, Pierre, his model and factotum Lydia Dylectorskaya and his patron Etta Cone among others—were likewise compounded of dedication and turmoil. The work, meanwhile, took its own course, whether mutating through a single epic piece or proliferating in new media, through two world wars and an absolute transformation in the tenets of and expectations for art. Spurling's chief source is a huge but largely untapped collection of correspondence, on which she draws very deftly to convey the mood and tone of various sojourns in Paris, Nice, Tangiers, Tahiti and elsewhere. In addition to 24 pages of color plates, the book is peppered with b&w photographs, portraits and sketches. Spurling's rich, flexible style is well attuned to the rigors and flights of Matisse's creative life.

The latter years of Matisse’s career made up what he described as his "second life". This catalogue is dedicated to Matisse’s late work and provides a greater understanding of the artist through his correspondence with the writer André Rouveyre. It begins with a serious operation Matisse underwent in 1941 and ends with his death in 1954, a period of 13 years during which there was an extraordinary blossoming of his art. Rouveyre was a novelist and artist dreaded for his cruel portraits, and an old friend from Matisse’s student days. These letters (almost 1200 of them) provide unprecedented insight into Matisse’s creative process and artistic aspirations, at a time when he was redefining his modes of expression. Many are adorned with drawings and decorations and for the first time this catalogue relates these letters to works produced, or in production, at the time they were written: oils on canvas, drawings, illustrated books, tapestries, stained-glass window maquettes, and large and small gouache cut-outs.

No other subject inspired Henri Matisse with such passion throughout his career as the female figure in interior settings. This is the most comprehensive publication to cover the topic of women in the work of the great regenerator of European painting, and in so doing, it covers the full spectrum of Matisse's creative evolution, from the small, somber, early pictures to the masterly compositions of his Fauvist phase, the intimate pictorial inventions of the Nice period, and finally the luminous paper cutouts of his late work. Many of the interiors show women reading, sleeping or daydreaming, passive figures enveloped in Oriental fabrics, costumed as odalisques or reclining on chaise longues. Additional motifs include the artist and his model, the artist's studio, the portrait, the still-life, and the view from a window. Figure Color Space offers an in-depth survey of this important subject in Matisse's work, through which he developed and continually explored his rich and imaginative repertoire of forms and colors. Along with paintings from all periods, it includes sculptures, drawings, cutouts and prints, as well as historical studio photographs by Cartier-Bresson, Brassae, Hal ne Adant and others. A richly illustrated biography completes this exquisite presentation.

Klein uses Matisse's portraits to illustrate various aspects of portraiture, from the social, philosophical, historical, and psychological to the purely painterly. Through vivid descriptions of the paintings and discussions of the artist's relationships with his sitters family, friends, patrons, colleagues, etc. he develops the initial broad theoretical discussion of portraiture into a particular chronological analysis of the meaning of portrait painting to Matisse's life and work. Some of Matisse's paintings of his wife are distant, while portraits of his daughter seem more intimate, however isolated she may appear. Especially interesting is the artist's portrayal of himself throughout his life, revealing his introspection, integrity, and persona. John Russell's Matisse: Father and Son (LJ 5/15/99) will satisfy the desire for more details on the artist's character and family life. Here, however, Klein provides a novel approach to understanding one of the 20th century's most important artists as well as a fresh definition of a heretofore ill-defined genre. Lush illustrations are plentiful throughout. Artists and art students interested in portraiture, as well as specialists, will want this book. Recommended for all types of Western art book collections. Ellen Bates, New York

Timed to coincide roughly with the opening of the blockbuster Matisse-Picasso exhibition's third and final stop, at New York's MoMA QNS (February-May), this volume examines the enmity and amity between the 20th century's two greatest painters, mostly as evidenced by their art. Despite the subtitle, Flam, who brilliantly edited Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, is much less interested in the endlessly chronicled lives of his subjects than in the work; sentences like "When Matisse returned from Morocco that spring, he was full of turbulent emotions, and he created some of his most memorable and original works" simply serve as transitions to the next phase of work-on which Flam is terrific. In one passage, he finds the word "NON" ("a symmetrical word that asserts its negation in both directions") painted into the window grillwork between the husband-and-wife of Matisse's 1912 Conversation-a word that had been showing up in Picasso's work for the previous year. Flam locates similarly productive appropriations and reappropriations between the two painters over the years, so that anyone standing in line for the exhibition in Queens will profit from at least flipping through this direct, jargon-free study.

Henri Matisse lived at the villa Le Rêve in Vence from 1943 to1948. Here he created a sensuous world, bringing to Vence all the objects without which he could not draw and paint—jugs, vases, tables and chairs, shells, fabrics. A young Russian-born photographer, Hélène Adant, often came to visit her cousin Lydia Delectorskaya, who was Matisse's model and assistant from 1935 onward. Adant's photographs are a unique record, a series of freeze-frames that reveal the nature of Matisse's preparation for his art: perhaps an ornate Venetian chair partners a wrought-iron table displaying a yellow pitcher and melons; a pot of lilies or an octagonal Moroccan table are added. Matisse, hat on head, draws his Haitian model wearing a frilled blouse that Lydia has provided for the sitting.

Marie-France Boyer's text evokes the particular atmosphere of Le Rêve, where Matisse produced Yellow and Blue Interior of 1946, Large Red Interior