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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Please note this work has been requested for inclusion in the forthcoming exhibition, Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, to be held at the Tate Modern in London from April-September 2014 and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from October 2014-February 2015.
During the final decade of his life, Matisse pioneered a new technique--the gouache découpée--that he viewed as the apogee of nearly a half-century of aesthetic exploration. "From the Joie de vivre (I was thirty-five then) to this cut-out (I am now eighty-two)... I have searched for the same things," he proclaimed in 1951. "There is no break between my early pictures and my cut-outs, except that with greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 207 and 209). He began with heavy white drawing paper, hand-painted with Linel-brand gouache, and cut shapes from the sheet with scissors, holding the blades wide open to produce a shearing effect. With the help of studio assistants, he then pinned the paper fragments to his studio walls, rearranging them to achieve the desired balance of forms and colors before finally gluing the elements to their support. "It is a simplification," Matisse explained to the writer André Rouveyre. "Instead of drawing an outline and filling in the color--in which case one modifies the other--I am drawing directly in color... It is not a starting point but a culmination" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1977, p. 17).
Matisse had experimented with cut paper throughout the 1930s, most notably for the background of the Barnes mural, La Danse, and for a series of book, magazine, and exhibition catalogue covers based on cut-paper maquettes. But it was not until 1944, following an abdominal operation that left him seriously weakened, that he began to produce independent works from cut paper, a technique less physically demanding than painting or sculpture. Despite his ill health, Matisse viewed this period as one of intense creativity. He wrote to the painter Albert Marquet, "My terrible operation has completely rejuvenated and made a philosopher of me. I had so completely prepared for my exit from life, that it seems to me that I am in a second life" (quoted in ibid., p. 43). After 1951, he abandoned painting and sculpture entirely, and the paper cut-out became his sole vehicle for artistic expression.
Arabesques noires et violettes is part of a group of more than twenty cut-outs that Matisse executed in 1947 at his villa at Vence, a remote hillside town in the south of France. The works were conceived as a unified ensemble, assembled in columns on the wall of the artist's studio--though "without any goal other than study," he claimed (quoted in ibid., p. 131; fig. 1). The cut-outs all represent variations on the same formal model, centered upon one or more burgeoning vegetal motifs that recall seaweed or coral. The ultimate source for this imagery was a five-month trip to Tahiti that the artist had taken in 1930, memories of which surfaced in earnest at Vence. The smoke from his neighbors' chimneys there and the cyclists passing beneath his window reminded him of Papeete, he wrote nostalgically to his Tahitian friend Pauline, who still sent him regular supplies of plaited pandanus hats. John Klein has concluded, "In the mid-1940s, Matisse's recollection of the exotic nature of Tahiti and his technique of cutting paper to create works of art--two activities apparently unrelated to one another--came together in a broad flow of creativity. From this point forward he employed his Tahitian memories in the service of a new, thoroughgoing decorative spirit in his work" ("Matisse after Tahiti: The Domestication of Exotic Memory" in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1997, p. 54). Jack Flam continued to explain that Matisse's cutouts "began to combine his impressions of Oceanic flora and fauna with some of the formal characteristics of Oceanic decorative art--as in the allover patterning and abstract space..." (quoted in "Matisse and the Fauves" in W. Rubin, ed., Primitivism in 20th Century Art, New York, vol. I, 1984, p. 235; fig. 2).
(fig. 1) Matisse's studio at his villa, Le Rêve, Vence, circa
1946-1947. Photograph by Jacqueline Hyde. BARCODE: 28859024.
(fig. 2) Mask, Namau Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea. National Museum of Ireland, Dublin. BARCODE: 28859000.
Please note this work has been requested for inclusion in the forthcoming exhibition, Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, to be held at the Tate Modern in London from April-September 2014 and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from October 2014-February 2015.
During the final decade of his life, Matisse pioneered a new technique--the gouache découpée--that he viewed as the apogee of nearly a half-century of aesthetic exploration. "From the Joie de vivre (I was thirty-five then) to this cut-out (I am now eighty-two)... I have searched for the same things," he proclaimed in 1951. "There is no break between my early pictures and my cut-outs, except that with greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 207 and 209). He began with heavy white drawing paper, hand-painted with Linel-brand gouache, and cut shapes from the sheet with scissors, holding the blades wide open to produce a shearing effect. With the help of studio assistants, he then pinned the paper fragments to his studio walls, rearranging them to achieve the desired balance of forms and colors before finally gluing the elements to their support. "It is a simplification," Matisse explained to the writer André Rouveyre. "Instead of drawing an outline and filling in the color--in which case one modifies the other--I am drawing directly in color... It is not a starting point but a culmination" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1977, p. 17).
Matisse had experimented with cut paper throughout the 1930s, most notably for the background of the Barnes mural, La Danse, and for a series of book, magazine, and exhibition catalogue covers based on cut-paper maquettes. But it was not until 1944, following an abdominal operation that left him seriously weakened, that he began to produce independent works from cut paper, a technique less physically demanding than painting or sculpture. Despite his ill health, Matisse viewed this period as one of intense creativity. He wrote to the painter Albert Marquet, "My terrible operation has completely rejuvenated and made a philosopher of me. I had so completely prepared for my exit from life, that it seems to me that I am in a second life" (quoted in ibid., p. 43). After 1951, he abandoned painting and sculpture entirely, and the paper cut-out became his sole vehicle for artistic expression.
Arabesques noires et violettes is part of a group of more than twenty cut-outs that Matisse executed in 1947 at his villa at Vence, a remote hillside town in the south of France. The works were conceived as a unified ensemble, assembled in columns on the wall of the artist's studio--though "without any goal other than study," he claimed (quoted in ibid., p. 131; fig. 1). The cut-outs all represent variations on the same formal model, centered upon one or more burgeoning vegetal motifs that recall seaweed or coral. The ultimate source for this imagery was a five-month trip to Tahiti that the artist had taken in 1930, memories of which surfaced in earnest at Vence. The smoke from his neighbors' chimneys there and the cyclists passing beneath his window reminded him of Papeete, he wrote nostalgically to his Tahitian friend Pauline, who still sent him regular supplies of plaited pandanus hats. John Klein has concluded, "In the mid-1940s, Matisse's recollection of the exotic nature of Tahiti and his technique of cutting paper to create works of art--two activities apparently unrelated to one another--came together in a broad flow of creativity. From this point forward he employed his Tahitian memories in the service of a new, thoroughgoing decorative spirit in his work" ("Matisse after Tahiti: The Domestication of Exotic Memory" in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1997, p. 54). Jack Flam continued to explain that Matisse's cutouts "began to combine his impressions of Oceanic flora and fauna with some of the formal characteristics of Oceanic decorative art--as in the allover patterning and abstract space..." (quoted in "Matisse and the Fauves" in W. Rubin, ed., Primitivism in 20th Century Art, New York, vol. I, 1984, p. 235; fig. 2).
(fig. 1) Matisse's studio at his villa, Le Rêve, Vence, circa
1946-1947. Photograph by Jacqueline Hyde. BARCODE: 28859024.
(fig. 2) Mask, Namau Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea. National Museum of Ireland, Dublin. BARCODE: 28859000.