Matisse's Garden - Hardcover

Friedman, Samantha; Matisse, Henri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870709100 ISBN 13: 9780870709104

Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014

Synopsis

One day, the French artist Henri Matisse cut a small bird out of a piece of paper. It looked lonely all by itself, so he cut out more shapes to join it. Before he knew it, Matisse had transformed his walls into larger-than-life gardens, filled with brightly colored plants, animals, and shapes of all sizes! Featuring cut-paper illustrations and interactive foldout pages, Matisse’s Garden is the inspiring story of how the artist’s never-ending curiosity helped turn a small experiment into a radical new form of art.

About this title

About the Author

Samantha Friedman is an assistant curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is a contributing author of many books on art.

Cristina Amodeo is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Milan, Italy.

Henri Matisse (1869–1954), one of modern art’s most important figures, was a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker who began creating paper cutouts in the 1940s. 

Reviews

Gr 1–3—Seemingly on a whim one day, artist Henri Matisse cut a bird out of white paper, pinned it on his wall, and created a brand-new art form. Eight of his cut-paper works, some appearing as gatefolds, are reproduced in this charming, kid-friendly informational picture book that briefly describes how Matisse began working in his new style and how it and he soared as a result. Amodeo fully captures Matisse's inventive joy with her cut-paper illustrations, which work beautifully with the text and pop from the pages with brilliant, vivid colors, and kinetic energy. In a whimsical spread, the illustrator depicts the man flying to demonstrate how unfettered he felt as his scissors glided effortlessly through paper. Having started with white paper, Matisse eventually asked his assistants to paint paper against which to set his ever-larger cutouts that culminated in a studio "garden." (In a delightful touch, the assistants are shown in a scene reminiscent of the artist's La Danse.) Kids get cut- (or torn-) paper art intuitively and love playing with bright colors when creating their own masterpieces, and they'll appreciate that this book validates their own ideas about the freedom that comes with artistic experimentation. A brief biographical paragraph and material about the artworks close out the book. This title also makes for a great read-aloud before collage projects and in art units on major artists and color theory. Excellent.—Carol Goldman, Queens Library, NY

Edition details

• Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870709100
• ISBN 13: 9780870709104
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Amodeo Cristina
• Number of pages: 48