The Unknown Matisse
Man of the North: 1869-1908
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Astonishing and essential, the biography that reclaimed Henri Matisse from history's slanders and restored his place in the canon of the 20th century's greatest artists
Before acclaimed biographer Hilary Spurling turned her attention to Henri Mattise, precious few facts were known about his life - and those few were distorted by inaccuracy, misunderstanding and glaring gaps. The Unknown Matisse investigates the secret life of The Wild Beast (as he was known), whose early paintings shocked and enraged his contemporaries. It tells the story of an innovative genius, born in war-torn, poverty-stricken Flanders who finally overcame hardship and disaster to fulfil Van Gogh's prophecy: 'The painter of the future will be such a colourist as has never yet been.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite Matisse's prestige in the annals of 20th-century art, there has been no biography published for the general reader until this hefty first of two volumes. "Unknown" as much for that omission as for his family's "invincible discretion," Matisse has been allowed to face posterity as a less interesting, less dynamic character than some of his contemporaries. It is no surprise, then, that the stock techniques of sympathetic biography seem a bit more defensive than usual here as Spurling (author of Ivy: The Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett) tries to counter her subject's reputation as the prickliest, stodgiest hedonist ever to lift a paintbrush. Challenging conventional views of Matisse that acknowledge his greatness as an artist "while simultaneously belittling him as a human being," Spurling offers anecdote after anecdote illustrating his quaint mischievousness and selfless encouragement of other artists. She does a remarkable job of evoking the northern textile town of Bohain-en-Vermandois, where Matisse first assimilated the stringent demands of survival and acquired a reciprocal appreciation of luxury and irreverence. Still, when he decided at age 20 to become a painter, it was as drastic a rebellion as he seemed capable of, and Spurling never quite accounts for Matisse's transformation from a Beaux-Arts wannabe into a reluctant leader of the avant-garde. Her discovery that the "Humbert Affair" of 1902, a financial and political scandal of massive proportions, directly implicated Matisse's in-laws and, by extension, Matisse himself, makes for a gripping read and reveals much about the artist's early development. Six years later, when Harmony in Red emerges out of the artist's intense struggles with the art establishment and with his own radical impulses, the reader is as exhilarated as his biographer could possibly desire. 150 b&w photos; 24-page color insert not seen by PW.