Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

During the course of his long and exceptionally varied artistic life, Henri Matisse redefined the basic principles of art and secured a place as one of the masters of the Modern period.

Born in northern France in 1869, he began painting in 1890 and quickly discarded plans for a law career. Studying art in Paris, he began to experiment with form and color, an exploration that flourished over the ensuing years through painting, sculpture, lithography and other forms.

Matisse's stature as the most significant artist in the Paris School by the onset of World War I owed largely to the influence of Leo and Gertrude Stein and their circle. Until his death in 1954, he pursued his interest in the sensual properties of color and his concept of line as a means to explore shape and space.

(c)1995 Graphique de France