Henry Matisse
“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves (Henry Matisse, 2011).” Matisse was a sculptor, painter and printmaker. Just as many artists, it was a long road to success for Matisse. His work was most critiqued by France, his native country; calling it perverse and vulgar. Matisse was inspired by many people; people he got to know during his lifetime. He is known for creating his own style and the use of vivid colors throughout all his paintings; by doing this he helped to shape the artistic revolution of the 20th century.
Matisse was born in December 31, 1869 in France. His father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, wanted his son to study law. In 1887, Matisse went to Paris to satisfy his father and received a degree in law. Later, he obtained a job as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. Matisse hated his job, describing it as pointless and despicable. In the mornings, before he went to work, he began to take art classes, and began to felt in love with art. He ended up going back to school to study it more
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It was in this period of his life that he created almost all of his most famous paintings, like The Blue Nude, The Open Window, and La Danse. His work was internationalized mostly in Russia and In the US. Matisse’s rivalry with Pablo Picasso was very famous also. The two always looked through each other’s shoulders. They were very alike and very different at the same time. Picasso and Matisse both painted women and still life but Picasso was more imaginative and Matisse painted from nature. Matisse in one occasion tried cubism as we can see in his painting Piano lessons, but he struggled. Picasso once said “No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he (Henry Matisse,