biography
| name: |
Matisse, Henri (Emile Benoît)
|
pronunciation:
[matees]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1869–1954)
|
| biography:
| Painter, born in Le Cateau, N France. He studied law in Paris, then worked as a lawyer's clerk. An interest in art came unexpectedly in his 20s, and in 1892 he took classes in Paris, first at the Académie Julian, then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. From 1904 he was the leader of the Fauves (Fr ‘wild beasts’, the name given by a hostile critic), and although he painted several pictures influenced by Cubism and Impressionism, his most characteristic paintings display a bold use of brilliant areas of primary colour, organized within a rhythmic two-dimensional design. During the early 1930s he travelled in Europe and the USA, and in 1949–51 he decorated a Dominican chapel at Vence, near Nice. |
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