HENRI MATISSE (1869- 1954)
The Grande Casse (3, 855 m - 12,648 ft)
France
In Les Alpes de Savoie, 1901. oil on canvas, Musée Picasso, Paris
The mountain
The Grande Casse (3, 855 m - 12,648 ft) is the highest mountain of the Vanoise Massif in the Graian Alps in the region of Savoie, France. It is located in the heart of the Vanoise National Park, near the village of Pralognan-la-Vanoise, which is about 25 km southeast of the nearest town, Moûtiers. It has a steep 600 m high north face. The other sides of the mountain are more gentle, mostly consisting of broken rocks. A high ridge connects it to the nearby peak of Grande Motte. The ridge connecting the Grande Casse and the Grande Motte is the watershed between the Tarentaise Valley in the north and Maurienne valley to the south.
The first ascent was made by William Mathews along with guides Michel Croz and E. Favre via the southwest face on 8 August 1860. The north face was climbed on 6 August 1933 by the Italians Aldo Bonacossa and L. Binaghi.
The painter
The most famous french artist Henri Émile Benoît Matisse is known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves. Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern. In 1917 he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.
His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
The painting above showing The Grande Casse peak from the west, belongs to the early paintings period, all painted before 1905.
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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
