Matisse: Cut-Outs

Drawing with scissors: The revolutionary late-period work by Matisse Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for a longer period of time. In this late phase of his life he was almost 80 years of age he developed the technique of carving into color, creating bright, bold paper cut-outs.

Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupees (gouache cut-outs) in fact represented a revolution in modern art, a whole new medium that re-imagined the age-old conflict between color and line. This fresh, standard TASCHEN edition of our original prize-winning XL volume provides a thorough historical context to Matisse s cut-outs, tracing their roots in his 1930 trip to Tahiti, through to his final years in Nice.