Matisse

1953 · réf. 209055 — Paris France: Berggruen & Cie 1953. Softcover. Good transparent plastic has rips around edges wraps are dampstained at edges front and back. Minor foxing on title page otherwise pages are excellent. Color illustrated wraps in transparent plastic. ~ 20 pp. Many color illustrations. Includes invitation designed by Matisse small printing reproduced from a 1951 collage. "Matisse's wonderful discretion consists in making every effort made dissappear from his work to blur the tracks of its routing to erase all trace of the will to succeed so that the conclusion remains alone on the field of the painting light flower and spring water crystal. The work acquires a happy grace a racy finesse this spontaneity that gives us the essentials: the starting point of the artist his emotion. Matisse's art is at the antipodes of children's art whose spontaneity is only a natural raw material. He is also at the antipodes of the art of classical painters who by dint of subjecting their works to excessive and often conventional work lose most of what they have to tell us. Meeting the great primitives Matisse the extremely civilized regains their confident energy. His language rejuvenates the old words of painting which seeds brought back into virgin earths again manifest their presence." - translated from introduction. Berggruen & Cie paperback