In 1930, Henri Matisse was commissioned by the wealthy American Dr. Albert C. Barnes to paint a mural for his collection room. This work is an etching of the plan for that mural.
Women kick their legs upwards in front of pink and blue segments. Their leaping bodies intersect with the angles of the blue sections, evoking dynamic flight. In the black segments there are women crouched down on their haunches. The contrasting colors and poses resonate, creating a sense of bursting, vibrant motion.
The artist made this composition by making arrangements of cut-out pieces of colored paper, and then transferring the resulting outlines onto a canvas using black charcoal tied to a bamboo stick. In this way this work contains the seeds of the cut-out and line drawing techniques that flourished with Matisse’s decoration of the Vence chapel in his later years.
(SAKAMOTO Kyoko)
In 1930, Henri Matisse was commissioned by the wealthy American Dr. Albert C. Barnes to paint a mural for his collection room. This work is an etching of the plan for that mural.
Women kick their legs upwards in front of pink and blue segments. Their leaping bodies intersect with the angles of the blue sections, evoking dynamic flight. In the black segments there are women crouched down on their haunches. The contrasting colors and poses resonate, creating a sense of bursting, vibrant motion.
The artist made this composition by making arrangements of cut-out pieces of colored paper, and then transferring the resulting outlines onto a canvas using black charcoal tied to a bamboo stick. In this way this work contains the seeds of the cut-out and line drawing techniques that flourished with Matisse’s decoration of the Vence chapel in his later years.
(SAKAMOTO Kyoko)