Matisse Cut Outs

Toward the end of his monumental career as a painter sculptor and lithographer an elderly sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for long. In this late phase of his life-he was almost 80 years of age-he developed the technique of ''carving into color '' creating bright bold paper cut-outs. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man these gouaches decoupées (gouache cut-outs) in fact represented a revolution in modern art a whole new medium that reimagined the age-old conflict between color and line.This edition of the first volume of our original award-winning XXL book provides a thorough historical context to Matisse's cut-outs tracing their roots to his 1930 trip to Tahiti and continuing through to his final years in Nice.