Henri Matisse, drawings 1936 / with an introduction by Christian Zervos and a poem by Tristan Tzara ; translated by Richard Howard.
"The drawings that Matisse produced in the mid-1930s were those he valued as amongst his very greatest achievements. And finely reproduced as they are here now, they astonish, delight and seduce everyone who sees them by their verve, their audacity and their voluptuousness. Made in pen and ink, admitting of no correction, devoid of shading or hatching they are, as Matisse said of them, 'the most direct expression of my emotion.' These portraits and drawings of models reclining in and against profusely patterned textiles and ornamented backgrounds, are miracles of pure line, of fluid arabesques seemingly spontaneous and free, yet rationally controlled to embody the height of exoticism and sensuality. The naked and clothed models, mirrors, reflections of sprawling limbs and of the artist himself or his own hand drawing, spread in waves across the whiteness of the paper. There was no delay in recognizing these miracles of draughtsmanship as a sort of pinnacle of perfection and in 1936 Christian Zervos reproduced a selection of them in his journal Cahiers d'Art. This present volume is a near facsimile of that special edition, and makes a rare and highly sought-after publication and body of work available again for all to admire and enjoy."--BOOK JACKET.
Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 - November 03, 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid, brilliant and original draughtsmanship.
As a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. 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.
This book is rather interesting because of the drawings but the writing is just not all there and there is not enough of it to provide real inside into the work of the artist.
It would have been nice to have more context, but overall beautiful works and worth picking up from the library if casually interested, and buying if sincerely interested in Matisse's drawings.