Matisse: Painter as Sculptor

Dorothy Kosinski, Jay McKean Fisher, and Steven Nash; essays by Ann Boulton and Oliver Shell

Hardcover, 312 p., 35 b/w and 261 color illus.

Widely known for his vibrant and innovative modernist paintings and works on paper, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) produced a large number of sculptures that were equally groundbreaking. This original and lavishly illustrated book examines more than forty of Matisse’s sculptures and joins them with his paintings, drawings, prints, and collages to investigate the relationship between his two-dimensional and three-dimensional work.

Essays present an overview of Matisse’s creative invention in sculpture and address his sculptural process from beginning to end. The volume presents the results of exciting new technical studies on Matisse’s working and casting methods. A selection of works on paper, paintings, and photographs unveils the evolution of his sculptural ideas—highlighting the importance of drawings to his process—and explores the fascinating issue of why he often painted images of his sculptures into many of his major works. Archival and installation photographs reveal how Matisse originally intended his works to be viewed.  Matisse: Painter as Sculptoralso examines the artist’s work in the context of late-19th–and early-20th-century sculpture. Works by Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Alberto Giacometti, Jacques Lipschitz, and Auguste Rodin address important questions of influence, affinity, and the meaning of modernism in Matisse’s sculpture.

This catalogue was published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art, October 28, 2007–February 3, 2008.