Matisse and Picasso

Both rivals and comrades-in-arms, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1974) engaged in one of the richest artistic dialogues of the century.

After briefly recalling the origins of the dialogue between Matisse and Picasso, the author dives straight into the context of their reunion, the moment when, around 1930, a teasing Picasso coaxed Matisse out of his shell and urged him to step back into the ring of modernity.

Matisse and Picasso is not a traditional art history book. This work reads like a novel in which the protagonists are as much the artists and their works as the shifting relationships that set them in motion.

Drawing on scholarly research in the archives, Yve-Alain Bois traces the intertwined evolutions of these two giants of modern art as if it were a game of chess between two masters.