The Words of Matisse

Towards the end of his life, Matisse used letters in his wonderful cut-paper art. We will examine the context of his use of words and see how we can create something with a similar mood

Bottom centre and bottom right: Matisse's work

Maggie felt that Matisse was best expressed in primary colours.

 

It was incredible seeing how studying Matisse’s cutouts inspired such a variety of work. We began by anyalysing his work and looking at photos of him working. We considered his enormous scissors, the idea of painting the coloured paper to use for cutting, his colour schemes (or not) and his ideas of design and pattern creation. We used acrylics on paper which was great for paper coverage, colour and cutting, but difficult to glue because it curled. 

Lois hes elected to do white on white, playing with edges

One of the interesting issues was to try to decide if Matisse sometimes cut randomly then looked at the resulting shapes to look for the suggestion of figures, or if always cut with a shape in mind e.g. The Knife Thrower from the Jazz series.

Another interesting discussion was the “interesting” or perhaps naive letterforms, as can be seen in the bottom right picture. This gave all our non-calligraphers an advantage. We also enjoyed the sense of humour as in the Parakeet and the Mermaid.

Tessa worked on gessoed canvas setting pattern against stylised images

I felt that at the end of this workshop everyone had gained something different.

More work completed!
Su Bonfanti began her exploration of Matisse's work with an intensive study; by copying his seriographs, but translating them using coloured tissue. Not for the fainthearted!
As she progressed and assimilated his concepts she was able to apply the ideas and style of figure-study to a completely new design. In addition, the tissue paper created transparencies which give added depth to the composition. These pieces are small - about A4 in size - so you can imagine the amount of craftsmanship that went into working with delicate tissue in cutting and glueing.  Brilliant!

Floating Tissue - Su Bonfanti

La Mer - Su Bonfanti

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