Blue Figures

During 1952, one of Matisse's most prolific late years, he created many ambitious paper cutouts, among them the presentBlue Nude. Facing front with arms raised and breasts projecting sideways, the pose recalls various standing odalisques from his Nice period of the 1920s. The simple but effective composition is built up from six disjointed pieces of blue painted paper that seem suspended in space. It represents one of a dozen or so variations on the theme that Matisse created over a period of several months. That same year, his cutouts culminated in the production ofThe Swimming Pool(Museum of Modern Art, New York), a gigantic, dynamic composition with multiple figures.

The paper cutouts, prepainted with blue gouache, synthesized the intrinsic qualities of both painting and drawing—form, color, and line—and allowed the artist "to draw in paper," as he described it. This new idiom, which he had used for the first time in 1931 (while developing his large compositionDancefor Dr. Albert C. Barnes), enabled him to create images in which form and outline were inseparable. During his final years, when illness left him bedridden, the cutouts became virtually his only means of expression, still exuding the master's undiminished inventiveness and creativity.

"The Swimming Pool"
Commenting on The Swimming Pool, his largest cutout, Matisse said, "I have always adored the sea, and now that I can no longer go for a swim, I have surrounded myself with it." Indeed, this nearly fifty-four-foot-long frieze of blue bathers silhouetted against a white rectangular band was designed to adorn the walls of Matisse's dining room at the Hôtel Régina in Nice. At the time of its creation, the artist was restricted to his bed or to a wheelchair, and he conjured this lyrical depiction of the natural world for his personal enjoyment.
Read from right to left, beginning and ending with a representation of a starfish, the contours of the diving or swimming forms eventually dissolve until the blue shapes define the splashing water and the negative white space represents the abstract figures. In a dynamic interplay with the background support, each bather flows rhythmically into the next, sometimes breaking free of the horizontal band in a graceful arabesque. Matisse combines contrasting viewing angles—from above looking down into the water or sideways as if from in the water—so that the different postures of the figures themselves determine the composition as a whole. With this spirited yet serene aquatic imagery, the artist brings to brilliant culmination his career-long desire to create an idealized environment.
Source:Henri Matisse: Blue Nude (2002.456.58) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Source:Henri Matisse: Blue Nude (2002.456.58) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art