CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/15/2015

The Oasis of Matisse

"The successive flights of doves, their orbits, their curves glide into me as if in a great interior space. You cannot imagine how much, in this period of paper cutouts, this sensation of flight that comes over me helps me better to adjust my hand as it guides the path of my scissors. It is quite difficult to explain. I would say it is a sort of graphic, linear equivalent of the sensation of flight. There is also the issue of vibrating space. To give life to a brushstroke, a line, to make a form exist, that is not something achieved in conventional academies, but beyond, in nature, in the penetrating observation of the things that surround us. A tiny detail can show us a grand mechanism, an essential cog of life." White Alga on Red and Green Background (1947) and the above quotation from a conversation between Matisse and writer André Verdet are reproduced from Koenig Books' beautiful The Oasis of Matisse, one of our Top Holiday Gift Books of 2015. >>