Henri Matisse: Prints

Matisse Prints Bernard Jacobson Gallery

A wide-ranging exhibition featuring more than 60 rare and important works from the gallery’s comprehensive collection of Matisse Prints, currently the largest and most significant collection of Matisse prints held by any commercial gallery in the world.

Matisse is an artist we celebrate for his sumptuous use of colour but he was also a consummate master of line: a virtuosity employed to considerable effect throughout more than half a century of printmaking. These largely monochromatic works, created using a range of techniques, place him firmly as one of the greatest printmakers of the 20th century and appear to us as fresh and vivacious now as the day they were made.

Printmaking was frequently used by Matisse as an extension of drawing and an opportunity for him to experiment with the use of simplified, sometimes an almost abstract line. With printmaking, he could return repeatedly to favourite compositions, such as the seated or reclining female and adapt them to suit the demands of his artistic vision.

This exhibition focusses on 6 distinct printmaking approaches, employed at different stages during his artistic career – lithography, etching, linocut, woodcut, drypoint and aquatint. The earliest works date from the 1900-03 and fittingly begins with a self-portrait in Drypoint, Henri Matisse Gravant, depicting the artist in the intense act of observational drawing. The final works are all aquatints, dating from the late 1940s and displaying the full force of his simplified and dramatic use of line.

 

Duration 07 July 2018 - 15 September 2018
Times Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm
Cost Free
Venue Bernard Jacobson Gallery
Address 8 Golden Square, London, W1F 9HY
Contact 4402077343431 / mail@jacobsongallery.com / www.jacobsongallery.com

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