10 facts about art revolutionary, Henri Matisse

Artist Henri Matisse once proved that creativity takes courage.

The first major showcase in Africa of his artwork will take place at The Standard Bank Gallery from 13 July to 17 September in an exhibition titled Henri Matisse | Rhythm and Meaning, but just who was Matisse?

• Matisse was born in France in 1869 and died at the age of 84.

• He started off in life as a lawyer before revolutionising the art world.

• He was frenemies with Pablo Picasso. They would often produce the same subjects and even sometimes works with the same titles.

• Matisse had a lifelong interest in African art and collected African art objects.

• The artist developed a technique he called ‘painting with scissors’ when confined to a wheelchair during his later years. After he could no longer stand for extended periods of time, the artist began creating works using a pair of scissors and paper. He used a long stick to assemble them on his walls until he was happy with the arrangement.

• Matisse, who loved jazz, once said, “Jazz is rhythm and meaning.” And, “There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.”

• Other well-known quotes include, “A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.”

“I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.”

“Creativity takes courage.”

• Matisse was one of the founders of the Fauvist movement, ‘fauve’ meaning wild beasts.

• The biggest single collection of Matisse’s work, comprising more than 500 paintings, is in the Baltimore Museum of Art in the USA and is the bequest of sisters Claribel and Etta Cone.

• Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite, was a member of the French Resistance during WWII.

• Many of Matisse’s most significant paintings, including La Danse, were collected by the Russian collector Sergei Schukin in the early 20th century. This collection is now split between the Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art.

Henri Matisse | Rhythm and Meaning will feature works drawn from the artist’s early Fauvist years, through his interest in exoticism and orientalism, to the paper cut-outs that he produced during a late-career creative renaissance.

The core work in the exhibition will be the full suite of 20 impressions for the prints in the artist’s book –Jazz– some of the best known and most celebrated of the artist’s works.