Henri Matisse France, 1869-1954
"Color, above all and perhaps even more than drawing, is a liberation"
-Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 - 3 November 1954) was known both for his use of colour and his fluid, original draughtsmanship. Primarily a painter, but also a printmaker and sculptor, Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the most significant artists defining the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century.
The intense colourism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (French for "wild beasts"). Many of Matisse's finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern.
After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.
His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.