Matisse’s latest interview will be published in September.

He was a giant of 20th century art, revered by all for his special sense of line and color. An extensive interview in which Henri Matisse freely shares his thoughts on his work and state of mind will be first published in a separate book after Matisse himself banned its publication more than 70 years ago.

In 1941, in an interview that took several days and was given by the artist in two cities - Lyon and Nice, Matisse spoke with remarkable sincerity about art, but later changed his mind and the project never got into print. Matisse was indignant at the partial editing of his words, which reduced the final text to 260 pages. This decision was caused by a lack of paper in wartime and the need to reduce the cost of publishing a book. “You want to cripple my work,” the artist boiled. “I’m doing a good job or not doing at all. Either you publish all 310 pages or not at all! ”

Disagreements with the publisher touched not only the "paper" issue. The editor believed that some of the things said simply should not be made public. In particular, in the final version there were no disdainful words of the artist about art collectors, whom, according to Mastiss, he “always hated”. In the same spirit, the artist spoke about dealers: “To be a good art dealer… you just need to know how to sell.”

In his interview, the artist admitted: “I am more likely to be depressed, and sometimes I see everything in black… The biggest concern is that I lose the opportunity to work. But I learned to put up with black despair by whistling or singing. ”

For a long time, the text of this conversation languished among the papers of Pierre Courthion, a Swiss art critic. In 1980, his archive was acquired by the Getty Research Institute. The publication of the material was made possible thanks to the cooperation of Tate galleries and the Getty Institute.

The editor of the new book, Professor Serge Guilbaut, said: “Publishing a book rejected by its author is not an easy task. It took not only many years, but also a lot of talk. Claude Duthuit, the grandson of Matisse, was not interested in having it all published because it would be contrary to Matisse’s wishes. But, when he realized that Getty was preparing the final text for publication, he thought that he could get an interesting historical document and wrote a foreword. ”

Gilbo added: “This interview was known to some specialists in Matisse’s work, but was never quoted for its length… There really are many original discussions, many details about his life, his problems and hopes heard directly from his lips.”

Matisse, who died in 1954, is particularly revered for his color research. This interview sheds new light on his technique. For the artist, the combination of colors is like a musical chord, and he likened the whole picture to symphonies.

Matisse himself spoke of the expressive qualities of color: “For me, the power of color in my paintings consists of four or five colors that collide with each other, and the collision gives a feeling of energy. When I put green, it does not mean grass. When I set blue, it doesn’t mean heaven. ”

Speaking about how he came to understand color, Matisse recalled how, at the age of 21, recovering from an operation to remove appendicitis, he read a book entitled “How to Draw”: “It was a seed. It had to grow. Since then, I hardly thought about this. Who knows where it came from. "

The book Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview will be published this September.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru