1. What nationality is Matisse?

French

2. Matisse is sometimes referred to the master of what?

The master of colour.

3. What did Matisse’s mum and dad do for a living?

His parents were seed merchants.

4. When was Matisse born?

He was born 31 December 1869.

5. What did his mum give him when he was a child and was ill with depression?

She gave him an art box

6. What year did Matisse travel to the South of France?

1905

7. What did Matisse decide to ignore?

Light, shadow, perspective and imperceptible brushwork.

8. What boundaries did Matisse push?

The boundaries of form, colour and the principles of the colour wheel.

9. What did Matisse try to portray in these paintings?

An emotional response to reality.

10. Who was the person who started buying Matisse’s work in bulk?

A Russian textile magnate industrialist, Sergei Shchukin.

11. What happened to most of Shchukin’s Matisse collection?

It ended up in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg

12. What was the reaction to the paintings ‘Music’ and ‘Dance’ from 1910?

People were horrified and mocked the colours used for the skin. They felt that the paintings violated everything that anyone had ever established in art history about beauty, order, clarity and harmony.

13. What did the Communist dictator Stalin do to all the paintings?

He confiscated the paintings from Shuhukin and then banned them altogether.

14. Who is Albert Irvin?

A British abstract artist.

15. What was always at the core of Matisse’s work?

Black and white.

16. Matisse tried to join the army for the First World War but was rejected because he was?

He was too old.

17. What year did Matisse move to the city of Nice in the South of France?

In late 1917.

18. What subject did he mainly paint?

Semi-naked women.

19. What year did Matisse first visit New York City?

1930

20. How old was he?

60

21. Which American Abstract Expressionist did Matisse’s Red Studio painting inspire?

Mark Rothko

22. Who was Lydia Delectorskaya?

An assistant who first helped him with his mural but was then rumoured to become his lover.

23. In 1940 was a bad year for Matisse, what two things occurred?

The Nazis invaded France and he was diagnosed with bowel cancer before undergoing life-threatening surgery that almost killed him.

24. Who came to visit Matisse and couldn’t believe that the villa was where Matisse lived?

Pablo Picasso.

25. In 1947 Matisse invented a new technique?

The paper cutout technique where you would cut out coloured material to directly apply colour.

26. What did this technique allow Matisse to do?

It allowed him to continue creating artwork is his frail, bed-ridden state.

27. Why were the cutouts produced?

So that he could continue working.

28. How many books were published?

250 copies

29. How old was Matisse when he made The Snail?

83

30. How did he describe the process of making the artwork?

He described it as drawing with colour.

31. What is an atheist?

A person who doesn’t believe in the existence of God(s).