Henri Matisse Jazz /anglais - Hardcover

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.

With this book you hold an artist's spirit in your hands. Each page reveals deeply felt ideas, years of dedication to art and its craft, innate sensitivity to visual stimuli and their perfect organization for the most exhilarating, most satisfying result. The precise equilibrium of these elements in Jazz is Matisse's unique achievement. The dark rhythms, roiling counterpoint, happy staccatos, and jolting dissonances of this Jazz will sound forever. Matisse has taught the eye to hear.