Author(s): Henri Matisse

Artists & Styles

This version of Matisse's cut-out masterpiece, "Jazz", is an exquisite and dazzling suite of colour plates and text that, like the music it was named for, was invented in a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity. " A form filtered to the essentials," the eighty-year old master of modern art called the cut-paper technique. He began experimenting with the medium after an illness impaired his ability to paint, and it was cut paper that gave him a new sense of artistic freedom. Matisse's compositions are accompanied by reflective handwritten thoughts that offer informal advice to artists and students, as well as by an introduction from Riva Castleman, former director of the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art.