Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in a small area in Le Cateau located on the border of France and Belgian. In a two room house were the floor is dirt and the roof leaks every time it rains, he lived with his two parents named Emile Hippolyte Matisse (father) and Ann Heloise Gerard (mother). When Henri studied law in 1890 but suffered from appendicitis and then two years later started to become more interested in painting and gave up law career. Other French painters influenced like Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne, but studied more in dept of the dutch painter Vincent van Gogh in the beginning of 1899. In 1906 he became an avid print maker. Henri Matisse was internationally popular during his lifetime and he died in Nice on November 3, 1954 and was
The work that I selected from Henri Matisse is called The Dance it was inspired by realism but he didn’t want to be too detailed with the painting. Realism is showing what is actual and not have a wild imagination and not straying from that. Henri painted 5 very low detailed women with long hair holding hands naked but the ladies on the bottom left corner aren’t showing a disconnect dancing on plain green gas in a dark blue sky. But this painting is more than just some low quality detailing but its about life and how these women dancing free in nature and not caring but joying the company of their peers. The way these ladies body move it’s like water going down a stream just flowing without a care in the world. These women don’t show one bit of expression but you can tell they are happy by the body language.
This painting called out on me I don’t know why but when I first saw it was easy to know what it is because everything in the room was abstract and it had less details than the others as well. This painting drew me because it was the one I can explain the best and Henri Matisse and his collection in the before 1939 and 1890 time period and his worked interested me the most. I asked why have this one painting with 5 women dancing naked? Why 5 women? Why not mixed with men and women or like a family? Why not diverse skin colored women?
https://www.masterworksfineart.com/artists/henri-matisse/biography
Emmanuel, I have always loved this painting! You do a nice job of describing the emotions the work evokes. I agree that it has a truly joyous quality. If we are thinking about Modernism, I would say that the lack of realistic detail is one of the Modernist aspects of this work. Matisse is interested in the feelings that the painting evokes, not in rendering any particular scene faithfully. This painting is about the idea of dance, not about any particular dancers.