Artist

Henri Matisse

1869–1954 · French

Henri Matisse spent seven decades reshaping how colour and line describe pleasure. Trained as a lawyer before turning to painting in his twenties, he led the Fauves at the start of the century and, bedridden late in life, invented the cut-out as a way to continue drawing with scissors. The Vence Chapel, completed in 1951, is his summation.

Matisse worked toward what he called "an art of balance, of purity and serenity." In the final decade, unable to paint at the easel, he cut painted paper into shapes his assistants pinned to the studio walls — drawing in colour, direct and unhurried.