Henri Matisse


The links between Matisse and music are close and complex.
First of all, it is a personal passion because he played the violin from his youth. When he moved to Paris he developed even more his passion by going to Cafés-concerts and popular balls. His parisian period allowed him to deepen his knowledge of classical music.
Matisse's art is influenced by dance, music, rythm and its representations are numerous whether in drawings, engravings, or even sculptures: his art is part of a long tradition of links between painting, music but also dance.

This painting, named "Music", dates from 1910 and it was presented at the exhibition of the Salon d'Automne in Paris with his other famous artwork "Dance". Both caused a scandal due to the fact that the respresentation of naked people was quite realistic. Matisse usually used saturated color and flat picture for the trasmission of sensations, indeed both these paintings are made with this technique. Both are made without any preparatory sketches, and thus the paintings bear many traces of modifications.
In "Music" the violinist has a very realistic pose, the artist achieved this purpose quite simply because, as I said, he used to play that musical instrument from his youth.
Looking at these two masterpieces we can also notice how "Music" has a static composition, while "Dance" has energentic and dynamic characters: the result of putting them close is a perfectly balanced composition.
The aim was to show man's achievement of a state of completeness by immersion in creativity.


"Joie de Vivre" is the name of this famous canvas painted in 1906. Matisse wants to represent joy portraying an outside scenery in which some people relax, dance, lay in the grass observing the landscape... and so on. The artist represents the same scene he will paint in 1910 in Dance : in the center we can see a group of six people dancing in a circular movement.
The purpose of the artist is to represent an oasis of relax, an idealized scenery where men can find life's pleasure which is reached also with dance and music.