Matisse. Cutouts. 40Th Ed.,Used

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 lifehe was almost 80 years of agehe developed the technique of carving into color, creating bright, bold paper cutouts. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupes (gouache cutouts) in fact represented a revolution in modern art, a whole new medium that reimagined the ageold conflict between color and line.This edition of the first volume of our original awardwinning XXL book provides a thorough historical context to Matisses cutouts, tracing their roots to his 1930 trip to Tahiti and continuing through to his final years in Nice. It includes many photos of Matisse, as well as some rare images by Henri CartierBresson and the filmmaker F. W. Murnau, with texts by Matisse, publisher E. Triade, the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisses soninlaw Georges Duthuit.In their deceptive simplicity, the cutouts achieved both a sculptural quality and an early minimalist abstraction, which would profoundly influence generations of artists to come. Exuberant, multihued, and often grand in scale, these works are true pillars of 20thcentury art, and as bold and innovative to behold today as they were in Matisses lifetime.About the seriesTASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our programnow more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.