MATISSE, Henri.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Jazz. First facsimile edition of Matisse's late masterpiece, originally published in 1947. "At the age of seventy-five, during a twelve-month confinement to his bed, Matisse composed Jazz. The title itself evolved from the affinity Matisse felt between his own method of improvisation and that of jazz musicians. Actually, most of the scenes of Jazz are taken from circus life and represent sword swallowers, knife throwers, cowboys and tank swimmers. Several of the performers existed in life, for instance Codomas and Monsieur Loyal, a famous clown. The illustrations for Jazz were not conceived as original prints. Instead, they are splendid colour reproductions of the signs Matisse worked out with scissors, paste and pins. The artist first covered large sheets of white paper with thin washes of brilliant colours [brilliantly rendered in this edition]. From these he cut out figures and forms which he then arranged with paste and pins into bold patterns. These collages of painted pieces of paper (Matisse called them 'drawings with scissors') were reproduced by pochoir (stencil) using the same colours Matisse himself had originally mixed" (Leymarie, Read, & Lieberman, pp. 28-29).

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