Description

Signed in the plate collotype.

From the Dessins, Thèmes et Variations suite. Printed in an edition of 950 and published by Martin Fabiani in Paris in 1943.

This extremely rare suite was issued in Paris in 1943 and very few sets seem to have survived.

In the early 1940s, in war-torn Europe, the published Martin Fabriani offered Henri Matisse an extraordinary commission. Matisse was to choose a few of his favourite themes and make a series of drawings. In a letter to his daughter, Matisse commented on the project:

For a year I made a very important effort, one of the most important in my life. I developed my drawing and with ease made surprising progress with freely expressed sensibility, a wide variety of sensations but a minimum of means. It was like a breakthrough.

The works were seneitively drawn with elegant unshaded line describing simplified forms of female figures and still lifes.

A copy of the numbered justification page will accompany the purchase of this work.