FREE ESSAY ON MATISSE

MATISSE

A special chapter in the history of modern sculpture could be devoted to artists who are
known primarily for their careers as painters, but who have also made groundbreaking
contributions to the understanding of three-dimensional form. Henri Matisse, celebrated
as one of this century's greatest colorists, is also now recognized for the brilliant
invention he brought to his sculptural compositions. 
Born in La Cateau-Cambresis, in northern France, Matisse first studied law before taking
up painting at the age of twenty-one, and in 1891 he enrolled at the Academie Julian in
Paris. The following year he transferred to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he studied
under the great Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. In 1899, Matisse was introduced to
Andre Derain, who in turn introduced him to Maurice de Vlaminck. These artists shared a
fascination with the tonal dynamics of Post-Impressionism; their vivid compositions
increasingly gave color an emotive, independent, and antinaturalistic role. They
exhibited together at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne, where their paintings created a
sensation, leading one critic to refer to them as Les Fauves or wild beasts. By 1909
Matisse shifted to a more serene style in paintings, executed with broad color planes,
simplified structures, and idyllic subjects.
Matisse's first sculptures were created during his student years. Not surprisingly, his
earliest figures were copies after small-scale academic bronzes. By 1900 Matisse had
begun more ambitious compositions. His Serf, 1900-1903, took Rodin's The Walking Man as a
point of departure. Where Rodin cropped the figure to emphasize the dynamism of the pose,
Matisse chose to emphasize the static qualities of his standing figure. Over the next
decade Matisse created a number of female nudes, variously rendered as standing and
reclining figures, which reveal his careful study of the model. Unlike such
contemporaries as Aristide Maillol, who consciously echoed classical archetypes, Matisse
sought to render the female nude with a new immediacy, freed of art-historical
conventions. 
The Backs are Matisse's most radical works in bronze. The figure, shown from the back, is
executed in high relief against a framing ground, a painterly device with few precedents
in sculpture. By turning the figure away from the viewer, Matisse explores the challenge
of endowing the human form with expressive power. In the succession of works, the figure
is progressively straightened and the axis of the spine becomes the increasing focus of
the composition. The four panels were executed over a twenty-year span, with each
successive image reworked from a plaster cast of the preceding one. The Backs were never
shown together during Matisse's lifetime and were not conceived as a series or set.
Rather, they should be regarded as one work that passed through four stages-an ongoing
sculptural clarification of the artist's vision.