Henri Matisse
French, 1869-1954

Henri Matisse’s paper cutouts—translated into ceramic tiles, paintings, prints, stained glass, and stage sets—express the artist’s drive to create. Finding it difficult to paint while recovering from surgery in 1941, Matisse used scissors to cut shapes from paper painted with gouache (opaque watercolor). He pinned the shapes up on the wall of his studio, rearranging them until satisfied with the composition.

Matisse used this technique, which he called “drawing with scissors,” to produce the images for the book Jazz beginning in 1943. Instead of reproducing the cutouts as lithographs (a process that did not satisfactorily capture the vivid colors of the gouache-painted paper), Matisse decided on the pochoir technique, in which thick ink was applied to paper through stencils cut in the shapes of his designs. The eye-popping result is today recognized as one of the most important—and most beautiful—artists’ books ever produced.

Text by Henri Matisse
Book with 20 pochoir prints, 1947
Illustrated: Icarus, plate VIII of Jazz
Published by Tériade, Paris
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1979.3
© 2007 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York