Lot 367
  • 367

Henri Matisse

Estimate
450,000 - 650,000 USD
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Description

  • Henri Matisse
  • Jazz (Portfolio of 20)
  • Signed H. Matisse on the Justification
  • The complete portfolio, comprising 20 pochoirs printed in color, after collages and cut out paper designs, on Arches wove paper with a table of contents and a portfolio cover. Each framed (20 prints).
  • Each approximately: 16 1/2 by 25 1/2 in.
  • 42.1 by 65 cm

Provenance

Sale: Swann Galleries, New York, November 9, 2000, lot 720
Private Collection (and sold: Artcurial-Briest-Poulain-Tajan, Paris, December 6, 2011, lot 19)
Acquired at the above sale

Literature

Claude Duthuit & Françoise Garnaud, Henri Matisse, Catalogue raisonné des ouvrages illustrés, Paris, 1988, no. 22bis, another example illustrated pp. 165-85

Condition

Very good condition. Executed on white Arches wove paper. Grey Portfolio with a Table of Contents and Justification, both of which are frame. The 20 color pochoirs are individually framed. Each sheet is fixed to a card mount at various points along the perimeter of the verso. The edges are deckled. Some very minor time staining and faint spots of foxing to some sheets, otherwise fine. No tears or planar distortions.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Living in Vence in 1943-44, his health ailing, Matisse was unable to paint or draw freely as he once had, returning instead to the cut-out technique he had worked with years prior in his preparations for a mural commissioned for the Barnes Foundation. Using only large shears and gouache-painted paper, he meticulously produced this series of twenty paper cut-outs that he published in his idiosyncratic and much-celebrated album Jazz in 1947, the images reproduced as pochoirs under the artist’s precise supervision at the printing press. Its subject matter drew immense inspiration from folktales and the circus, and in fact the series was once set to be titled Le Cirque. His publisher, Tériade, later suggested the title Jazz which Matisse welcomed for the connection it implied between art and musical improvisation. The combination of bright colors and spontaneous subject matter evoke a joie de vivre which further elevates Jazz as one of the most beautiful, groundbreaking and personal artist’s books of the twentieth century.

Matisse’s bold, exuberant paper cut-outs, a new medium unto themselves, appeal with their engaging simplicity yet also impress with their creative sophistication. John Elderfield writes of Matisse’s process in his book on these cut-outs, “With Jazz Matisse began using the Linel gouaches that characterized his subsequent cut-outs. He used those colors for Jazz because they exactly corresponded to the printers’ ink colors and therefore guaranteed exact color reproduction. Also in Jazz Matisse began extensively to develop a repertoire of formal signs using this highly saturated color. The increasing number of independently conceived cut-outs that followed Jazz…can be viewed as Matisse’s attempts both to codify his new vocabulary and to create a new syntax especially appropriate to it. In doing this, he was increasingly drawn toward an expansive all-over decorative format” (John Elderfield The Cut-outs of Henri Matisse, New York, 1978, p. 9).

Originally intended as illustrations for a poetry collection, in the end Matisse replaced the text with his own notes, which were originally written with a paintbrush in looping letters, providing a visual counterpoint to the bursts of colorful images. As Lucinda H. Gedeon writes in her introduction to the first issue of the Grunwald Center’s annual publication, dedicated entirely to the graphic works of Matisse, “Despite the assertion by Matisse, the poetic reflections included in the text on art, love, hate and his tracing of his development as an artist from his early law training to his new cut paper technique for which he coined the phrase ‘drawing with scissors,’ and in his advice to young artists, the text is certainly more than a visual accompaniment to the pochoirs. As Jack Flam noted it is more Matisse’s ‘artistic autobiography’—‘a summing up and an anticipation: Matisse’s synthesis of his past and his projected future’” (Lucinda H. Gedeon, “Henri Matisse, Introduction,” in Grunwald Center Studies, vol. I, Los Angeles, 1980, p. 11).