Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. From 1887 to 1888 he studied law in Paris; he later worked as an assistant to an attorney in Saint-Quentin. While recovering from appendicitis in 1890 Matisse began to paint, initially as an autodidact. He gave up his law career and studied at the Académie Julian. In 1892 he began his training in the atelier of Gustave Moreau. In 1895 he was accepted at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and he studied the works of Paul Cézanne and the Neo-Impressionists intensively. In 1904 he had his first exhibition at the art dealer Ambroise Vollard’s, showing Impressionist works. In collaboration with André Derain, in 1905 he produced his first Fauvist pictures. In 1906 he met Pablo Picasso and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. A trip to Algeria awakened his interest in African art. International exhibitions, commissions and sales soon followed. In 1913 he travelled to Moscow and Morocco and participated in the Armory Show in New York. He moved to Nice in 1918, where he maintained regular contact with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard and Picasso. From 1943 to 1948 he lived in Vence, France. In 1950 he was awarded the prize for painting at the 25th Venice Biennale. His late work was dominated by paper cut-outs. Matisse died in Nice in 1954.