Henri Émile Benoît Matisse

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was, alongside Pablo Picasso, one of the two undisputed twin giants of 20th-century visual art. At the historic 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, Matisse unleashed canvases of screaming, unmixed pure color, prompting a shocked critic to dub him and his circle les Fauves ('the wild beasts').

Matisse sought 'an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.' His monumental masterpieces The Joy of Life (1906) and The Dance (*La Danse*, 1910) reduced human form to fluid, kinetic musical rhythm. Confined to a wheelchair in his final decade, Matisse invented 'painting with scissors'—carving brilliant paper cut-outs (*gouaches découpées*)—and designed the jewel-like Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence.