1938, Henri Matisse, The Striped dress -- Albertina (Vienna)
From the museum label: Although Matisse came to be the epitome of the decorative element in twentieth-century art, a deliberately chosen aestheticism of ugliness marked his beginnings: his anti-classical approach, which was opposed to Impressionism's mimicry of nature, caused a sensation at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, where Matisse, together with Derain, Vlaminck, and others, was mocked as a "Fauve", a "wild beast". In 1907, Matisse began losing interest in Fauvism. He increasingly concentrated on colours and planes and created "an art of balance, purity, and tranquillity". This also holds true for this painting, done in 1938, in which the decorative play of forms and colours is led towards the brink of abstraction.
1938, Henri Matisse, The Striped dress -- Albertina (Vienna)
From the museum label: Although Matisse came to be the epitome of the decorative element in twentieth-century art, a deliberately chosen aestheticism of ugliness marked his beginnings: his anti-classical approach, which was opposed to Impressionism's mimicry of nature, caused a sensation at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, where Matisse, together with Derain, Vlaminck, and others, was mocked as a "Fauve", a "wild beast". In 1907, Matisse began losing interest in Fauvism. He increasingly concentrated on colours and planes and created "an art of balance, purity, and tranquillity". This also holds true for this painting, done in 1938, in which the decorative play of forms and colours is led towards the brink of abstraction.