Matisse et la gravure

Catalogue of the exhibition Matisse et la gravure, presented at the Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, (18 October 2015 - 6 March 2016).

Who better to describe the artist's printmaking than Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite? Charged with supervising and validating Matisse's prints, and author, with her son Claude Duthuit, of the catalogue raisonné of the engraved work, she devoted a large part of her life to helping people discover ‘this unknown continent’, which is nevertheless an essential component of the work of an artist who is emblematic of colour!

This catalogue explores all the engraving techniques used by the artist from 1900 until the very end of his life. Matisse considered them to be drawings and did not retouch the plates: he started again! For Matisse, engraving, drawing, painting and sculpture all had the same importance, and all the major themes in his ongoing research into the human figure are represented in this book.

For the first time, the matrices (woodcut, lithographic stone, drypoint, etching, linocut, etc.) accompany the works, giving us an insight into the incredible demands, the relentless work involved in turning black into colour and achieving, with an economy of means, an incomparable purity.

> See exhibition details