Henri Matisse

Matisse, Henri, The Girl with Green Eyes. 1908. Oil on canvas, 26 x 20 in. (66 x 50.8 cm.). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Γεννήθηκε στις 31 Δεκεμβρίου 1869, στο Le Cateau, Picardy, της Γαλλίας και πέθανε στις 3 Νοεμβρίου 1954, στη Νίκαια. Το πλήρες όνομά του ήταν Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse και θεωρήθηκε ως ο σημαντικότερος Γάλλος ζωγράφος του 20ού αιώνα. The leader of the Fauvist movement around 1900, Matisse pursued the expressiveness of colour throughout his career. His subjects were largely domestic or figurative, and a distinct Mediterranean verve presides in the treatment. Matisse, whose parents were in the grain business, displayed little interest in art until he was 20 years old.

Henri Matisse, Self-Portrait in a Striped T-Shirt. 1906. Oil on canvas. Statens Museum for Kunst, Κοπεγχάγη, Δανία

From 1882 to 1887 he attended the secondary school in Saint-Quentin; after a year of legal studies in Paris, he returned to Saint-Quentin and became a clerk in a law office. He began to sit in on an early-morning drawing class at the local École Quentin-Latour, and, in 1890, while recovering from a severe attack of appendicitis, he began to paint, at first copying the coloured reproductions in a box of oils his mother had given him. Soon he was decorating the home of his grandparents at Le Cateau. In 1891 he abandoned the law and returned to Paris to become a professional artist... [Διαβάστε τη συνέχεια ΕΔΩ] Δείτε κι αυτό: a text from "The Shock of the New", by Robert Hughes